A Wisdom of Wrens

Clare Seal

Fifty wrens had stuffed themselves,
into a Welsh wall, for warmth,
a young man once told me,
by the graves where his parents lay.

He said the nest was no bigger
than two hands clasped together,
Troglodytes troglodytes. Status: amber.

Severely rotund,
comical stuck-up tail,
ridiculously loud song
for such a small creature.

Fifty years passed, you, tic-tic-tic,
nosing into crevasses, searching for insects,
birring sound waves.

Birds emerged as the young man had knelt,
grass stains on his trousers,
the packed mass unspooling.
Where did one bird end and another begin?

You know your moment to shout,
king of a bird, thriving in mildness.
You do not know you are tiny.

The Science

This poem came from hearing a story about wrens years ago from an old friend. The RSPB (British Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) describe the wren’s elusive nature, although today it is one of the ‘commonest breeding birds’ in the UK. The winter of 1962-1963 was extremely cold which decimated the wren population and led to many wrens sharing nests with others of their kind for survival. The wren is still registered as amber on the UK Conservation List, despite numbers increasing. Undoubtably, periods of extreme heat and cold will threaten this ‘King of a Bird’. In European folklore, a story tells how the birds decide who will be king. Despite its diminutive size, by employing cunning, the tiny wren is able to outwit the mighty eagle and win the title.

The Poet

Clare Seal is a writer and sign language interpreter based in the Southwest of England where she often writes about ecology. Having had plays broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the past, now working with a visual language in her day job, her senses were drawn to the hard-to-see wren by its loud tic-tic-tic-ing song.

Next poem: About Birds by Gwen Sayers