The Cactus Wren

COURAGE IN A CACTUS PATCH

Its song was once likened to "rubbing two small millstones together." With millstones not too common these days and the inability of most of us to make sense of birdcall codes, only two possibilities exist to draw your own opinion: have someone send you a recording or take a trek into the southern deserts of Arizona for a first-hand earful. Opting for the latter, of course, allows you to make a more accurate appraisal, and it could well be something like: "Sounds like ten or twelve math teachers chattering chalk across a blackboard at the same time." It rolled you out of bed at dawn, didn't it? With crossed eyes.On Day Two it doesn't seem all that bad. On Day Three you say it's on a par with the wake-up call of a bantam rooster. On Day Four, for all-around pleasantness, it edges out the rooster by a couple of points. On Day Five you're up before the feathered fellow starts, so you don't miss any of his tune. On Day Six you can't live without it.

This is the spell of the cactus wren. Anyone who has hobnobbed with this largest of wrens, tuned into it, and observed it flitting across the desert-scapes to perch boldly on a saguaro or organ pipe cactus podium develops a special affinity for the bird.

Once you arrive in its sunny habitat you'll have no problem finding this bird; often, it finds you. In Saguaro National Monument-both the east and west sections-Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Tucson Mountain Park, and even suburban backyards, it is downright friendly and lets you move in close so it can study you.

The thornier-the-better seems to be the rule by which the cactus wren judges real estate. It nests in the stiletto sharpness of prickly pear cactus, yucca, agave, and the cruelest plant in the desert-the cholla. Few predators dare venture there, yet the wren indifferently darts among the spines.

The female lays from three to seven eggs and, along with dad, cleverly builds a tract of dummy nests near the real thing, popping in and out of them periodically to give them a lived-in look. The nests are globe-shaped and entered from the side. The small downy contents are hidden well, certainly from aerial hunters, and considering the odds-which nest is the right nest? - are as safe as the thousand-dollar notch on a carnival midway's wheel of fortune. Survival of young birds is high. And that is great! The desert wouldn't be the same without the cactus wren. So many folk felt that way, legislators made it the State Bird of Arizona.