Lifebird #31 – Be Careful What You Ask For
| Species | House Wren / Troglodytes aedon |
| Where | Home |
| When | April 2004 |
| Who | Joann |
| Number | 31 |
My first House Wren appeared in our yard in the spring of 2004 looking for a home. A nest box built by Nicole as a project in a theater class at Hamline is mounted on a tree in our yard. There’s nothing wrong with her workmanship on this house, and it would make a fine stage prop, but it’s not quite what a House Wren wants. The entrance hole is too large, and the inside dimensions are more spacious than what a wren would prefer. So, after “kicking the tires” a bit (to use an inapt metaphor), the male wren moved on to something more to his liking.
A couple of years later I put up a nest box built to the right specifications, and we’ve had a House Wren pair nest in our yard every year since. This is definitely a mixed blessing. One thing the male house wren does very well is sing (he’s also a fierce defender of his territory and nest). Singing, for a House Wren in breeding season, starts at about the first hint of daylight, and continues almost non-stop until daylight fades away some fourteen hours or so later. And there’s nothing quiet and soothing about its song. It beats waking up to the sound of a garbage truck or a motorcycle, I guess.
See lifebird index.
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