Sedge wrens enliven birding in Princeton

It’s always fun when a rare visitor comes to town, and the birding buzz around Princeton the last few days has been about a pair of sedge wrens who have come calling at the Mountain Lakes Preserve.

Reports on the wrens had been coming in from e-Bird, and this morning I decided to take my chances spotting them. Although I’d visited the preserve for a unicycle ride (yes, unicycle!) when I first got to town, I had not been back and had never gone birding there.

From the parking lot, I walked up a trail hoping to get to the Seward Johnson boardwalk. I had a trail map but wasn’t sure I was heading in the right direction. At a trail intersection, a woman walking her dog pointed me properly.

Once on the boardwalk, I saw three birders looking out on the field to the right. They had just gotten good views of both sedge wrens and gave me a few pointers on spotting them. A fourth birder tipped me to where one of them was, and I saw it fly before it plunged into the grasses.

After walking back and forth for a while, I heard the rat-a-tat call of the other wren. Soon, another birder arrived, and she spotted it a few minutes later, tucked into a green-leafed plant. But the bird was barely visible and made a couple of sorties to our right. Eventually it flew back to our left and landed atop another plant, partially obscured.

There was so much green in our field of view that our cameras had difficulty focusing. I took several shots, some of them “blind,” then repositioned myself, hoping for a better angle.

That angle brought me the shot topping this post. Neither it nor the one below (taken a few minutes earlier) is tack sharp, but they leave no doubt of the bird’s identity.

I had logged a sedge wren a couple of years ago at the Pole Farm, when I got a fleeting, distant glance at one while in a scrum of birders. This time, I could see the bird — most of it, anyway — through my binoculars. I’m pleased to have gotten a couple of fair photos, too.

I headed home about 8:45 a.m., happy that I’d made a good find. I’d venture out once more into the beautiful day — sunny with a high around 75 — and I’ll report on that outing later. 🦅