Hunting the wren

For some reason I went to check the caravan today. It's a decrepit old thing that we offer as emergency sleeping accommodation and formerly for the boys' teenage sleepovers, but it's not been used all summer. I was amazed to find a wren trapped inside. It must have squeezed in through a small aperture but the window it was perched beside was closed and I don't imagine it would have made its way out unaided.

There was an old custom in Wales and other Celtic countries of Hunting the Wren on the Winter Solstice (December 21st), or St Stephen's Day (December 26th) or on Twelfth Night (January 6th). A wren would be captured by youngsters and paraded around the houses in a miniature beribboned bier. A peep at the wren (probably dead by now) would offered in exchange for food or drink. The Hunting of the Wren was a tradition rooted in an early Celtic myth about the return of the sun.

Troglodytes troglodytes is a minute bird that weighs only as much as a £1 coin. If I had not released it it could not have survived for long.

A perfect summer's day was shadowed by the shocking details of the atrocities in Norway and then by sad news of the death of Amy Winehouse. One tiny life spared while so many more have been lost.


Little bird BIG.