All species › Passerines › Wrens › Grenada Wren
Grenada Wren | Troglodytes grenadensis
Grenadawinterkoning | Chivirín de Granada
Grenada Wren is the most closely tied to people of the four Lesser Antillean house wrens split from Northern House Wren Troglodytes aedon in 2024. Like mainland house wrens it lives mainly around houses and gardens.
Voice
The song is loud, made up of trills and chatter. Calls are harsher and scolding, a rasping chrr. As in mainland house wrens, the song adapts to the noise of built-up areas.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
11–13 cm, small and rather stocky, with a short, often cocked tail. The bill is one of the longest in the group, giving the head a somewhat heavy look. The plumage is dark, warm rufous-brown; wings and tail finely barred dark. The supercilium is absent or barely visible. The throat is whitish, the rest of the underparts warm buff to rufous. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
The only wren on Grenada. Female Lesser Antillean Bullfinch Loxigilla noctis is brown, but has a short conical bill and an unbarred tail. St. Vincent Wren on Saint Vincent is much whiter below with a distinct supercilium; Southern House Wren Troglodytes musculus on Trinidad and Tobago is paler and less rufous, with a shorter bill.
Habitat
Mainly around human settlement: gardens, yards, villages and suburbs, farmland and plantations. It also occurs in undisturbed forest, but at lower densities. It forages low in vegetation and around buildings for insects and spiders, and often nests in cavities in buildings.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Only on Grenada, where it is widespread on the main island; it is scarce on the smaller offshore islands. It does not occur outside Grenada.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Almost any garden or yard on Grenada, including around St. George's and at hotels. The loud song from a roof edge or fence is the first clue.
Conservation status
Not yet assessed by IUCN (NE), as the species was only split in 2024. Its range covers a single island, but it is common there and benefits from settlement and open, cultivated land.
Scientific name
Troglodytes grenadensis | (Lawrence, 1878)
Lawrence described the species in 1878 as Thryothorus grenadensis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Troglodytes was introduced in 1809 by Vieillot. Troglodytes is Greek, from troglē 'hole, crevice' and dyein 'to creep into': 'cave-dweller', after the habit of disappearing into crevices and holes while foraging. grenadensis means 'of Grenada', the island where the species lives. The specimen the first description was based on came from Grenada (not specified further).