During migration, either species could show up in Wyoming, eastern
Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, eastern New Mexico, most of central
and western Texas, and widely throughout Mexico. If you’re birding in any
of these areas, make sure to note whether you identified a singing bird by
its song. Because there are almost no plumage differences between the two
species, most records from areas where their ranges overlap during
migration and winter will need to be entered as the slash (Eastern/Western
Marsh Wren) unless the bird was heard singing.
On Sat, Nov 7, 2026, 12:11 PM flyingcarlini via NEBirds <flyingcarlini=
<yahoo.com...> wrote:
> Hello NEBirders,
> Still futilely agonizing over whether there's any way to confidently i.d.
> silent Neb. migrant and wintering marsh-wrens near the edge of their
> ranges. Made a screenshot comparison of an Eastern and Western who both
> have medium hue plumage, as many individuals from both species do, and had
> to go back and double check they were indeed different species because they
> look so darn similar:
> [image: Inline image]
> -Shari Schwartz, Lincoln
> On Tuesday, November 3, 2026 at 09:46:24 AM CST, flyingcarlini via NEBirds
> <flyingcarlini...> wrote:
>
>
> Hello NEBirders,
> Below is a collage of Western Marsh-wrens specifically in our area
> created as a personal primer if by chance the oompressed image is helpful
> to anyone else. All pics are from Neb. except the one from LaCreek SD just
> across the border that was included for its surprisingly bright reddish
> upperparts. Tried to represent the broad spectrum of individual plumages
> and omitted pics from June through fall to avoid juvenile plumage. Body
> parts shown with color variation all over the map: crown, flanks, breast,
> and face. The one uniform characteristic so far is flanks always seem to
> be a lighter color than upperparts in our Westerns - to varying degrees -
> but never a comparable hue vs the flanks in SOME Easterns that are nearly
> equally as reddish as upperparts (such as the bird on our checklist).
>
> [image: Inline image]
> -Shari Schwartz, Lincoln
>
>
>
