A Tale of Two Sedge Wrens

Before 2026 I hadn't found a Sedge Wren in Connecticut, but I managed to break that streak in a big way this year...twice! The surprising part of the story is that both individuals were in my hometown of Wallingford.

On May 19th I was birding the large Tyler Mill tract and was trying to locate a trailhead I had not before visited. I missed my turn and used a small pullover along the busy road to re-check my map. With the windows down I heard a single distant burst of song that I swore was spot-on for Sedge Wren. But that would be verrrry unlikely here, to put it mildly. Also, I couldn't just get that lucky, right? Well I sat frozen in the car for another minute or so until the bird again gave one burst of song. Yep, Sedge Wren!

I grabbed my gear and slowly advanced toward the song. The bird was doing a bit of a circuit, as if on territory. There was no active nest building and there was no sign, yet, of any others. Anyway I hung at the edge of the territory until the wren completed its circuit and ended up right next to me. Nabbed a few photos and backed off.

One's first inclination when finding a rarity is to get the word out to the public. I was in the midst of typing something before I stopped myself to consider the scenario. We had a State Endangered species actively on territory during breeding season, which makes this a particularly sensitive case. In addition, I had an idea that this was a town-owned field but was far from sure. Third, there is a tiny pullover along a super busy road that can accommodate two cars max from which you could barely hear the bird, with no nearby alternative parking. This was not a good setup for public reporting until I did some digging. Because once the cat is out of the bag, it's out.

Sadly there have been many recent reports of local birders taping potential rare breeding birds. It happens every spring with species such as Kentucky Warbler, Yellow-throated Warbler, and King Rail. Sure, a couple bouts of taping here and there are unlikely to do harm, but we're talking about several folks incessantly using playback and potentially disrupting breeding attempts. I personally am not anti-playback in the nonbreeding season, even with most rare birds, but I draw the line when a potential rare breeder is basically harassed by the masses. With this fresh in my mind, I decided to hold off until I gathered more info.

It's a good thing I waited, because over the ensuing days, as the dude continued its presence and began building nests as male wrens do, I was able to contact the Town Conservation Commission and discuss the situation with them. They strongly advised against publicly reporting the bird, not only because of its State Endangered status, but because the field is split between private and town sections, both of which are off limits to the public. Also as previously noted, this busy road was not the spot for a twitch.

Still it is not a good feeling to keep a sighting like this from the general public. I felt badly about it for a while, until just a couple weeks ago actually, when David Mathieu found a chasable Sedge Wren up in northeast CT that many state/year listers got to see. Phew.

Back to our Wallingford Sedgie, he was last seen on June 1, by which point he was building multiple nests but still no female was in sight. I next returned on June 10 to find no sign of him. The field seemed undisturbed. My best guess is that he simply moved on after spending a couple weeks unsuccessfully trying to attract a mate.

And so I assumed my Wallingford Sedge Wren experience was wrapped up for the year, if not forever. Fast forward to this past Thursday. I left work to find that the weather was too nice to ignore, so I grabbed my gear from home and took at walk at the Wallingford Community Gardens. It was pretty birdy, and I had a fleeting glimpse of a couple warblers I wanted a better look at, so I pished up what turned out to be a Nashville and a Tennessee. I glanced down naked eye to see a small wren staring right back up at me. Was it?.....yep, another Sedge Wren.

It slowly hopped around and provided surprisingly confiding views for a little while before disappearing into the grassy brush. Jason R lives right around the corner, and this is his patch, so I let him know about the sighting and he was able to get there right away. The gardens recently posted a sign that states no entry without permit, so we discussed the possibility of reporting this publicly. With the obvious signage up, I didn't feel comfortable inviting potentially a bunch of folks into the area without explicit permission. As luck would have it, I had recently met the garden manager at a wedding earlier this month, so I had means to contact him quickly. He got back to me later that night with news that the gardens do indeed welcome birders and entomologists as special guests. He was aware of the situation with a potential small crowd of birders being present in the ensuing days and gave his blessing.

As was the case with both of these wrens, finding a bird in a location where access is not clear puts the finder in a tricky situation. Old Nick would probably have blasted out news with a "we'll figure it out later" mindset. But that has burned me in the past with the way twitching birders have treated the situation, which has put access into peril.

The most recent incident that was essentially my fault was something that I did not think would be an issue at all. The old North Haven landfill and its environs is off-limits to the public, but a few local birders including myself have developed a relationship with some of the surrounding property owners and occasionally ask permission to bird a couple of the areas. There's never an issue. We ask permission, we say thank you, we behave appropriately, and we leave.

Well the winter before last I was birding one of these sites when I spotted a Rough-legged Hawk hovering over the landfill itself. It could be viewed from one of a few open parking lots that surround the landfill. Those lots are presumably private (i.e. one is a gas station), but I figured that birders would be sensical enough to handle the situation without causing a scene. Besides, RLHA is an uncommon but not truly rare bird, so really how many people would want to chase this? So I reported the bird without giving it the thought it deserved.

Well, turns out a bunch of birders must've been tired of the same ol' winter birding by that point in the season, because messages started popping up left and right with reports of the hawk. As it happened, apparently some folks decided to start looking for ways to get closer to the bird, which led to trespassing. The police were eventually called. I wasn't there for it, but if I were, I would've spoken up, and probably not very politely.

It is possible, if not likely, that there was no malicious intent on the birders' behalf. They were probably just blindly enthusiastic at the time, which I hope was the case. And I get that, because I've been in that spot too. But there doesn't have to be malintent to throw a situation off the rails. I wonder, if I polled the birders on site, how many of them had considered whether or not their actions might ruin access that local birders had cautiously acquired over the years. Probably few, if any.

But that situation ultimately fell on me, because I didn't think through the reality of the case. I also did nothing to help explain the local access issues to the general public, as far as I can remember. So that's all on me. Count it as a lesson learned and applied to reports of rare birds going forward.

As it turned out with the Sedge Wrens, one was reasonably reportable while the other wasn't. It took some time to assess both situations to come to the right decision. And that's ok.

- Nick