Jan 2, 2008

Lifebird #31 - Careful What You Ask For

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 was mounted on a tree in our yard. There was nothing wrong with her workmanship on the birdhouse, 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.

The first photo here was taken in 2007 of the male of a yard-nesting pair. The next four are of 2008’s pair, followed by one taken the next spring of the inside of their home, and the last photo shows a proudly independent wren nesting in a natural cavity well away from human dwellings.

Since our 2011 move, we have regularly hosted House Wren nesters in our Shoreview yard. See this tale of a very industrious nest builder in 2019.