July 15, 2020
Gabriel, who’s living upstairs for a few months, identified the birds a week ago. We’d both been intrigued by their antics, as they climbed up the garage walls and the outside of the house, like lizards or squirrels.
Once he discovered the correct species, he also discovered an online recording of their song. Provided we limit the time we do it for, it’s fun to play this, and wait for a couple of them to pause and respond with their own versions.
I should explain that, since this house is built into a hillside, the builder decided to put the garage on the lowest level, so you could just drive in and park. He put the main floor (where I live) above that. Gabriel has the small apartment on the top floor.
Our garage, where the Canyon Wrens like to hang around.
The garage is cavernous, being about 11 ft high and 35×17 ft in area. It’s open to the skies at both ends, so we get squirrels, all kinds of bugs and the birds coming in.
A Canyon Wren. Note the long, strong toes, used for climbing.
The birds are Canyon Wrens (Catherpes Mexicanus). From a distance they look superficially like sparrows, but do tricks no sparrow does, or (presumably) wants to do. They occur throughout western North America, from British Columbia down to Chiapas in Mexico, but since I lived most of my life in Ontario, I never saw one till I came here.
They like human-built spaces like our ground-floor garage, which is made from lava-rock. There are crevices for them poke into with their long beaks when they hunt insects. I’m guessing there are also spaces for them to nest, in greater quantity than they’d find in most actual canyons or cliff-faces. Their song can be piercing when they sing it right outside my window at 7.00 in the morning, but otherwise they’re fun to have around.
I’m wondering if, among their insectile prey, they include Cochineal bugs (Dactyloplus coccus), which live on prickly pear cacti; we have a couple in the garden here. To date, however, since these critters produce large amounts of carminic acid, a red pigment that’s toxic to predators, I’ve not seen the wrens go after them.
The bugs, which don’t really move much, used to be harvested for their colour, which stains wool particularly well. Today, they’re considered a pest, and farmers who grow these cacti (nopales) for food must spray them to keep the Cochineals off.
The prickly pear, its leaves flopping and rotting after a summer of Cochineals eating it.
We had a magnificent nopal here until last summer, when these bugs attacked it, and soon it was covered in the white filaments they spin like cocoons, and was looking forlorn. The cactus is coming back this year, putting out new growth, and so far we have no Cochineals. The Canyon Wrens, though, seem to be having a good year, at least going by how often they’re around. I hope it stays that way.
Mexed Messages 