The first house wrens arrived in my yard on May 14. This is solid data because I was home every day of the month and on that particular day, I suddenly heard house wrens singing when they had been absent before. I am also quite certain that I was paying very close attention to the arrival of migrants because, if you remember, we had snow on May 9. As soon as that ridiculous situation was given the opportunity to resolve itself (i.e., melting) the migratory birds arrived in a feathered tsunami.
What I am not certain of is exactly who that wren was. Could it have been a member of the great avian vanguard, announcing their arrival with a fanfare of song and then moving onward to Canada, or did the bird I saw that day decide to stay? Without the ability to capture and band the birds, there is no way for me to know. Thus, all I can say is that the house wrens arrived on May 14.
The next bit of uncertainty in my story is due to the chaos that came with having new siding installed on my house. Day after day there was nothing other than the “bang, bang, bang” of hammer blows and the whine of electric saws. It definitely disturbed the rhythm of the household and social distancing requirements kept me inside for a great deal of that time. But I do know that at some point along the way I noticed that one of my bluebird boxes needed a little attention.
I toyed with the idea of going back up to the house and retrieving a screwdriver so I could remove the box from the post, but then I decided that this particular box location had never really been all that attractive to the birds in my yard, so I just pulled the entire thing out of the ground and walked up to my garage. I don’t exactly recall what happened next, but for one reason or another I leaned the nest box against the side of the garage and resolved to come back and get it “later.”
Well, my next visit was a tremendous (and wonderful) surprise because when I grabbed onto the post a little house wren flew out of the box. Again, the details here are fuzzy because of the presence of workmen around the house, but it had to be somewhere around May 24 because that is when the work was finally resolved and that would have given the wrens a little peace and quiet. A moment of whimsy overtook me and I decided to leave the nest box leaning there against my garage so I could see what would happen.
House wrens (Troglodytes aedon) are charming little birds that are so comfortable around people and the microhabitats that people provide, that they were named “house” wrens because they will nest near (and sometimes even in) human houses. Prior to human involvement, house wrens would have nested in natural cavities, and I am quite certain that some of these birds still nest in old woodpecker holes and other cavities in trees and rock walls, but all of the birds that I have seen nest in boxes provided by people.
Male house wrens will build nests in several locations in their territories and then offer them up for inspection by their potential mates. If the females approve, they move in, add a few finishing touches to the nest and then start laying eggs. The typical clutch of a house wren will contain 6-8 small, shiny white eggs that are decorated with a variety of speckles, blotches and washes of varying shades of brown.
These eggs will be incubated for about 12 days during which time the male will regularly visit the nest to check on the status of his beloved wife. The little couple may even take turns incubating their eggs, but there is a bit of uncertainty surrounding that aspect of house wren life. The birds are identical in appearance and it can be difficult to tell who’s who. Only when a male is singing can you tell them apart. Once the eggs hatch, the adults will be increasingly consumed by the effort to feed so many chicks and the activity at the nest will skyrocket.
By the time you read this column the eggs in this nest will most likely have hatched. When I took the photo for this column, the female was sitting on her nest, but regularly came out to sit in the “window” and keep an eye on what was going on in the neighborhood. I had just pulled into the driveway after returning from a photo expedition and she immediately poked her head out to see what all the commotion was about. In that moment, I felt like just a hint of an intruder on “her” land, but then I laughed to myself and reminded her that she was living in a box that I built which was leaning against a garage that I own.
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 23 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service and the Massachusetts State Parks and currently teaches high school biology and physics. Visit www.speakingofnature.com for more information, or head over to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.