The story of the bird
A small, spirited bird with an outsized voice, well suited to a porch, sunroom or gift for a birder who loves a big personality in a small frame. The Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus) weighs about 22 grams, slightly more than a sheet of printer paper, and produces a song audible from 200 metres, the loudest bird in North America relative to its body size. The call is usually rendered as teakettle-teakettle-teakettle, repeated with conviction from a position inside a brush pile, under a porch, or behind a stack of firewood.
The field marks are a warm cinnamon-brown above, buffy-white below, with a long prominent white supercilium and a tail that is almost always angled upward. The bird does not migrate. It stays through the coldest winters and pays for it in hard years - Carolina Wren populations drop sharply after ice storms and recover slowly. The birds that make it through become permanent fixtures of a garden.
The Audubon plate shows the wren in the characteristic posture: upright on a low twig, tail at 45 degrees, as if about to deliver the next teakettle. The supercilium and the cinnamon-brown back tones are the identifying marks.
Paper and finish
Unframed prints come on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm, a heavyweight cotton rag with a soft matte surface and true archival life. The surface holds fine lines and subtle colour gradients without glare, which matters for Audubon-tradition work where the cream ground needs to read as paper, not as a white field. The framed option is set in a classic moulding, glazed and ready to hang, in black, white or natural.
Sizes
Three sizes: 8x10, 16x20 and 24x30 inches, or an instant digital download at $9. Prints from $39. Framed from $99.
