• Carol the Carolina Wren perched on a utility line with a cricket in her beak
    Carol the Carolina Wren in Tootie’s Backyard.

Carol

the Carolina Wren​

Carol the Carolina Wren lives in Tootie’s backyard all year.

Tootie and Yoshi see Carol as she forages near the honeysuckle bush in their backyard. She is really fast and hardly stays still for more than a few minutes at a time.

You can identify Carol and her husband Carl by their brown coloration, the white stripe above their eyes, and the tawny color of their bellies.

  • Carol the Carolina Wren perched on a small branch near dead leaves

Carol’s Home

Carol and her husband Carl have raised many kids, usually four at a time. Each year, she and Carl build a cup-shaped dome with an entrance ramp using different materials they find around Tootie’s backyard. Each nest is built a little differently, and they’ve used bark, dried grass, dead leaves, pine needles, hair, feathers, straw, snakeskin, and even paper, plastic, and string litter to create the nests.

Carol and Carl live in Tootie’s backyard. Carol used to live in Tootie’s mailbox, but the hurricane last summer destroyed their home.

This spring, they moved to Tootie and Yoshi’s bedroom window where they raised a small family. He and Yoshi enjoy chatting with her from their room.

After they left the nest, many of the young birds moved away from Tootie’s backyard. Charlemagne stayed.

Have you seen Carol or her family in your yard?

  • Carol the Carolina Wren sharpening her beak on a thin tree limb

Carol’s Hobbies

Carol is very small and shy. She likes to fly back and forth between limbs on the bushes and trees in Tootie’s backyard.

She stays behind and underneath the branches of the honeysuckle bush in Tootie’s backyard, foraging and singing her teakettle song.

Carol is usually either with Carl or alone when she forages. When the kids are fledglings, or still living in the nest, sometimes she’ll forage with them, teaching them to be quick like her. When they’re together, they form a group called a herd or a chime.

Most often, when she or Carl are still long enough for Tootie and Yoshi to see them, they are singing, sharpening their bills on limbs, or cleaning their feathers – also called grooming.

What activities are the birds in your backyard doing?

  • Carol the Carolina Wren with a cicada in her beak as she perches on a branch

Carol’s Diet

Carol is an insectivore, meaning the majority of her diet is made up of insects. She loves to eat bugs, like grasshoppers and crickets, and will eat small lizards, frogs, and even snakes!

Carol is a ground forager, and she hunts for her food by hopping around on the ground, moving dead leaves to find the bugs underneath. Carol will also find bugs underneath the bark on the trees she forages on.

She also occasionally forages for fruit and seeds from sweetgum trees and poison ivy.

When her kids are young, she and Carl will bring them beetles, caterpillars, crickets, grasshoppers, and spiders and sing a duet while they feed them.

For the first few weeks that the kids live on their own, Carol and Carl will visit them, bringing them the same types of foods they ate in the nest.

What other animals do you know that are insectivores?

Learn more about Carol.

Activities

Crossword


1. Type of bird Carol is.
2. What Carol likes to eat.
3. What cleaning feathers is called.
4. Type of wren Carol is.
5. Where Carol sharpens her bill.
6. Type of tree seed Carol likes.
7. Where Carol and Carl's latest nest is.
8. The type of diet Carol follows.
9. A piece of litter Carol and Carl have used in their nests.
10. Where Carol forages for food.