Wren Close To Home

by Jillian Haight
(Mississauga, Ontario, Canada)

Last spring we heard a new song in the backyard and eventually saw the tiny bird who was producing it, a male house wren who I mistook for a female since it was building a nest in one of our oldest "decorative" bird houses.

This house was never intended for occupancy, the roof was little slats of wood glued together, the seams swollen from being rained on season after season.

A little while later we discovered that this bird was the male and he brought a female to check out the fancy new home he'd prepared for her!

A few days later there was no action around the house at all so I assumed that they had moved to another yard until one day I heard tiny peeping noises from the house.

I kept watch and noticed that the female was bringing food about every five minutes, to the babies.

Juicy caterpillars, inch worms, bugs with wings etc.

We watched this for days, fascinated and thrilled that they had chosen our house even though it was right outside our sliding door and only a foot away from people's heads as they walked down a main pathway in our garden.

My children were able to see the babies heads once the chicks grew tall enough to reach the entrance hole to wait for mom's return.

The day that their eyes opened however that all ended. As soon as they saw us peering in at them peering out they would duck down in a flash.

In one really heavy rainstorm I worried about the state of the roof of the house and ran out to put a folded piece of cardboard on a branch over the house to keep the water out. I'm amazed it held up at all!

She continued to bring them food for about 3 weeks, the male singing to her the entire time.

By this point I had built another house because I had read that House Wrens will quite often have another clutch of eggs while the first clutch of chicks is being raised.

I placed this one further back in the lilac bush, about 5 feet from the first.

We missed the fledging of the first clutch but our suspicions were correct.

The male was successful in convincing her to mate again (despite not having helped at all with raising the first clutch, she had to fight her way past his little singing body to get to her house) and within two weeks there was peeping from the second house.

By now it was July and house #2 was placed in a spot that ended up being a lot sunnier in mid day than I thought it was.

I added a tied together bunch of dead branches with leaves for some shade hanging down the side of the house.

These birds fledged in mid-July and we were lucky enough to see them the evening of their first day of freedom.

The mother stayed with them (4 or 5) and tried to keep them near our birdfeeder post which has a slinky on it to keep the squirrels down.

The babies were able to fly from the ground to the slinky and then they would have a little bouncing ride until they could fly up into a hollowed out log feeder for a rest.

I think they all spent their first night in this log.

What an experience it was to have nature in our own backyard.

The birds came back this year in late April and the male has been singing and singing but his chosen mate hasn't chosen our house yet...I'm still hoping that she will.