I’ve seen and photographed house wrens building a nest before, but never in a dead tree.
We had a bird house when I grew up in Illinois that was home to house wrens each year.
More recently I had the opportunity to photograph them was when I did a year-long photo project in Susan’s Garden — a gift from her daughter.
Here are two photos from Susan’s Garden.
House wrens can be very “noisy” with their constant chattering. But they are fun to watch, especially when they attempt to fit a three inch stick into a one inch nest hole, as in the sequence below.
A loud and insistent bubbly “song”, such as it is, is a surprise coming from such a small bird.
Here is one entering the hole without nest material.
Below is a sequence of the chattering bird about three feet above the nest hole.
Below a wren attempts to fit a long, sharp stick into the hole, but fails.
It dropped the stick, dove to the ground to retrieve it, and attempted to bring it back to the hole, only to drop it before reaching the hole. It then changed directions and chased it to the ground.
Here are more photos from the two times I visited the nest site in Enfield this May.
If you did not see the Bunting Blog and would like to, you can CLICK HERE to see three very colorful Indigo Buntings in Etna recently.
If you would like to subscribe to this blog to get email notifications when new ones are published, you can do that at the top right.