Wren

Wrens are a family of brown passerine birds in the predominantly New World family Troglodytidae. The family includes 88 species divided into 19 genera. Only the Eurasian wren occurs in the Old World, where, in Anglophone regions, it is commonly known simply as the "wren", as it is the originator of the name. The name wren has been applied to other, unrelated birds, particularly the New Zealand wrens (Acanthisittidae) and the Australian wrens (Maluridae).

Quotes

• Thus the fable tells us, that the wren mounted as high as the eagle, by getting upon his back.
  • Joseph Addison, Tatler, No. 224

• And then the wren gan scippen and to daunce.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Court of Love, line 1,372

• I took the wren's nest;—
  Heaven forgive me!
  Its merry architects so small
  Had scarcely finished their wee hall,
  That, empty still, and neat and fair,
  Hung idly in the summer air.
  • Dinah Craik, The Wren's Nest, in Poems (1860)

• For the poor wren.
  The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
  Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act IV, scene 2, line 9

• I found a robin’s nest within our shed,
  And in the barn a wren has young ones bred;
  I never take away their nest, nor try
  To catch the old ones, lest a friend should die.
  Dick took a wren’s nest from his cottage-side,
  And ere a twelvemonth past his mother died.
  • George Smith, Six Pastorals (London, 1770)

• Among the dwellings framed by birds
  In field or forest with nice care,
  Is none that with the little wren's
  In snugness may compare.
  • William Wordsworth, "A Wren's Nest", in Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems (1835), p. 180