Ontogeny, Phylogeny, and Cactus Wrens

The notion that birds are just ‘feathered reptiles’ can be hard to swallow until you live in a place with lots of both. Our desert yard has lizards by the pound, along with king snakes, bull snakes, and the occasional western diamondback (we wear shoes when we go outside this time of year!).

This afternoon Rita and Larry stopped by, and we spent some time watching the show on our kitchen patio. I don’t know what the attraction was, but the leaf litter piled up against the low stone wall was irresistible to the birds: Curve-billed Thrashers and Gila Woodpeckers dug deep holes in the ground, and even the relatively sedate Gambel’s Quail got into it, scratching and pecking at some invisible but obviously delicious prey. So much activity couldn’t help but attract Cactus Wrens, and one busy adult came in trailed by a still-fluffy juvenile, begging with scritchy calls and insistent pecks at its parent’s head.

What really struck us as we watched this noisy baby was how incredibly reptilian its movements were. It stretched its neck and waved its head slowly back and forth, just like a snake in the sun; and at one point it literally slithered down the wall to accost its hard-working parent. Momentarily sated, the young bird took a second to bathe in the sun, its wing and tail spread wide and flat against the warm ground, and I could easily have mistaken it for a large lizard had it not soon started up its noisy pestering again.