Pacific Wren

Rufous brown above, richly colored below, barred with darker brown and dusky, even on wings and tail. The bill is dark brown, the legs pale brown. Young birds are less distinctly barred.

The Pacific wren nests mostly in coniferous forests, especially those of spruce and fir, where it is often identified by its long and exuberant song. Although it is an insectivore, it can remain in moderately cold and even snowy climates by foraging for insects on substrates such as bark and fallen logs. Its movements as it creeps or climbs are incessant rather than rapid; its short flights swift and direct but not sustained, its tiny round wings whirring as it flies from bush to bush. At night, usually in winter, it often roosts, true to its scientific name, in dark retreats, snug holes and even old nests. In hard weather it may do so in parties, either consisting of the family or of many individuals gathered together for warmth. For the most part insects and spiders are its food, but in winter large pupae are taken and some seeds.

Breeding. The male builds a small number of nests. These are called "cock nests" but are never lined until the female chooses one to use. The normal round nest of grass, moss, lichens or leaves is tucked into a hole in a wall, tree trunk, crack in a rock or corner of a building, but it is often built in bushes, overhanging boughs or the litter which accumulates in branches washed by floods. …

The 1999 U.S. postage stamp Pacific Coast Rain Forest sheet features a stamp with a "winter wren (Troglodytes troglodytes)"; this bird was subsequently classified as the Pacific wren. The narrator of "The White Seal" story of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling is Limmershin, a "winter wren", actually the Pacific wren.