Painstakingly
I clean out the mess
of sticks and misc debris
the tenants left behind.
Antisocial creatures these
wrens, making their point
clear: they tolerate no
nosy nearby neighbours.
If you know about wrens, you’ll know they have a bad habit of stuffing every potential dwelling in the vicinity full of twigs so no other birds can nest near them. I try to get my wren houses all cleaned out before they return in spring so they’ll have a choice of housing. Some boxes are made to open, but if they don’t it can be quite a job to pull a bunch of debris from the small holes.
Our yard seems to be full of wrens now – probably half a dozen pairs – singing their little hearts out while their eggs incubate. Trouble is, we hear them loud and clear but we rarely see them. Once the chicks burst out of their shells, the parent birds will be run ragged trying to keep up with little appetites.
I hear constant starving wail now because some birds have discovered our bathroom fan vent. Some years back the cover on the outside of this vent pipe fell off. Half a dozen years back a tree swallow pair discovered the 2″ pipe and cavity inside. They liked the spot with its handy “entry” and raised two batches of chicks. It was interesting hearing them raise their families, but in fall we got up on a ladder and plugged the hole.
After some years of peace and no swallows coming anymore, I took the tinfoil out. Big mistake. Blackbirds (or starlings?) found the opening this spring and cheeped, “Hey! Wouldn’t this make a good nest?”
I tried to discourage them when I heard scrabbling in the vent area coming from the wall beside the built-in vanity. I got up and stuffed a tinfoil ball – shaped like a 2 x 4-inch “potato”– into the pipe. To be double sure they’d stay out, I stuffed a tinfoil sheet inside the wall, on top of this ball.
Well, they weren’t giving up. The next afternoon I saw the tinfoil sheet, relatively intact, lying on the ground not far from the vent opening. Looking around more, I found that the birds had somehow worked that ball of tinfoil out of the pipe and carried it clear across the yard to the barb-wire fence. Was one of the birds still inside when I stuffed in the tinfoil, or however did they manage to pull it out?
Anyway, rather than risk a dead bird or a nest of rotting eggs perfuming our bathroom, we’ve left them. Now we have this chorus of cheeps whenever mom or dad returns with some lunch. But come fall…
Christine's Collection 