House Wren production in the yard

 

A House Wren peeks from its nest box. Their abode hangs ten feet from my kitchen window. 

When I placed this box early this spring, I had high hopes that the local wrens would select it. As always, the male returned in mid-April about a week ahead of the female, and busily began ferreting out potential nest cavities. He quickly became - to my eye - especially interested in this box.

Male House Wrens create several dummy nests - aggregations of twigs and other material in potentially suitable cavities. When the female arrives, she sets about investigating these dummy nests, while the male, presumably nervously, looks on. If she likes one, she selects it and then takes over finishing the construction.

Before long, it was clear that the nest box was her choice and she busily set about completing the nest. All manner of vegetable matter was brought in, and once all is done and the wrens are gone, I look forward to seeing inside the box. Apparently, it should be a fairly massive cave-like structure with a den cavity towards the back. The final stages of nest construction are done by the female, as is incubation of the eggs.

After a few weeks of relative calm as the female wren incubated the eggs, the nestling hatched. The onset of this stage was obvious, as both birds began busily harvesting all manner of food items and bringing them in. This one has a spider. Arachnids are a common prey item.

This wren brings the chicks a de-legged daddy longlegs. Other items include moths, caterpillars, beetles, earwigs, and various small insects that I cannot identify. When the pair is on a roll, they're returning with perhaps two meals every five minutes. This continues to this day, but the chicks will soon leave the nest.

What goes in must come out and a wren departs the nest with a fecal sac. They are fastidious about removing these to far-flung places, often apparently sticking them to a branch high in a tree.

It's been about two weeks since the eggs hatched. While I still have not seen any chicks at the nest box entrance, they have clearly moved nearer to the hole. While the adults used to disappear into the box with food, now they just poke their heads inside - the chicks are that close to the entrance. This means that VERY soon they'll make their inaugural flight from the box, and I hope that I am here to see it. If I had to bet, it'll be tomorrow, or at the latest, Thursday.