And They All Flew Away

Well the baby wrens flew the nest this morning.  I had just seen one of them during this nesting so I thought all the eggs didn't hatch or something this time but we ended up with four babies flying away shortly after 8 AM.  It was the first time I got to see them all leave the bird house so you can imagine how thrilled I was.

The last one seemed very reluctant to leave and stayed away from the entrance quite a while after it's other siblings had gone.  Finally, it got up the courage to leave but had a very hard landing on our wooden porch floor.  I thought it had broken something and maybe died as it floundered around for a few minutes then lay very still under the bar-b-que grill.  I left it alone as, truth be known, I didn't really want to know if it had died.  A few minutes later I heard the mama bird and looked out to see the little one running all over the porch!  Thank God!  I guess he was just a little stunned after his ordeal but recovered after a few minutes and finally left the porch where he presumably joined the rest of his family.

So, I guess I'll be more productive now that I won't be spending so much time watching the wrens!  Well, at least for a while as I'm sure we'll have new tenants once or twice more before fall!

The Wrens Are Back In Town!

Most of you know that my favorite bird is the little Carolina Wren.  Over the past couple of years we've had them nest on our covered porch just a foot or so from the kitchen door.  More of my time has been wasted watching these perky little birds than just about anything else I've done. 

Well, we've noticed a pair of them building a nest in the bird house we put up a couple of years ago.  However, the wrens will often build nests that they never use - decoy nests if you will.  Since the building of the nest in our birdhouse, we haven't really seen either of the wrens.  That doesn't mean they aren't using the nest though.  Last year we thought they'd nested somewhere else and it wasn't until the pair started to feed the babies that we realized that they had actually occupied the nest.  Like I said, this was less than 2 feet from our kitchen door which has an all glass storm door and which we keep open to allow light into the kitchen most of the time.

I'm giddy with excitement and will keep you posted on whether we have babies this year or not!  In the mean time, here's a painting I did of one of our fledglings last year.

 Carolina Wren Fledgling

Watercolor