Southern house wren
Southern house wren
The southern house wren (Troglodytes musculus) is a very small bird in the wren family. It lives from southern Mexico to southern Chile and southern Argentina. The name Troglodytes means “hole dweller,” a nod to its habit of hiding in crevices when hunting insects or seeking shelter. It was once grouped with the northern house wren but was split apart because of big genetic differences, different songs, and different body shapes.
It was first described in 1823 by German naturalist Johann Andreas Naumann, who gave it the binomial Troglodytes musculus. The type locality is Bahia, eastern Brazil. The Latin epithet musculus means “little mouse.” There are 21 recognized subspecies.
In Argentina, southern house wrens tend to disperse between seasons more than within a season, with females dispersing more often than males. Widowed and single males disperse more than paired males; within-season divorce increases breeding success for females but not for males.
Conservation status: Not evaluated by the IUCN (no formal assessment).
Songs have been recorded in Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:32 (CET).