The Fair Isle Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes fridariensis, is a small passerine

Passerine

A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders: with over 5,000 identified species, it has roughly...

 bird in the wren

Wren

The wrens are passerine birds in the mainly New World family Troglodytidae. There are approximately 80 species of true wrens in approximately 20 genera....

 family. It is a subspecies of the Eurasian Wren

Eurasian Wren

The Eurasian Wren , is a very small bird, and the only member of the wren family Troglodytidae found in Eurasia. In Anglophone Europe it is commonly known simply as the Wren...

 endemic to Fair Isle

Fair Isle

Fair Isle is an island in northern Scotland, lying around halfway between mainland Shetland and the Orkney islands. It is famous for its bird observatory and a traditional style of knitting.-Geography:...

, Shetland, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. It was first described by Kenneth Williamson

Kenneth Williamson

Kenneth Williamson was a British ornithologist who had a strong association with Scotland and with bird migration.Williamson was born in Bury Lancashire. From 1941-1945 he served with the British occupation of the Faroe Islands in World War II, in 1944 marrying Esther Louise Rein of Tórshavn with...

 in 1951.

Description

The Fair Isle Wren is darker and larger than the mainland form of the Winter Wren, though not as dark as another insular subspecies, the Shetland Wren

Shetland Wren

The Shetland Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes zetlandicus, is a small passerine bird in the wren family. It is a subspecies of the Eurasian Wren endemic to the Shetland archipelago, north-east Scotland, with the exception of Fair Isle which has its own endemic subspecies, the Fair Isle...

, T. t. zetlandicus.

Status

Fair Isle is a small island, 7.68 km² in area, and the population of the wren is tiny, varying from ten to fifty pairs, breeding mainly on boulder beaches.