Something Is Happening

One early morning, a female downy woodpecker, the smallest type found in the U.S., climbed up the dogwood tree as she has done for months. She looked over at the suet feeder hanging on the nearby pole. She calculated the distance as she prepared to fly over and expertly turn upside down to get at the suet. (The feeder is designed specifically for woodpeckers. See photo below.)

But on a recent May morning as she climbed the tree she found a small, wooden structure. As she came close to it, a small, brown bird flew out from the nearby bush and attacked her. She spread her wings to make herself look larger but the smaller bird was not put off. She left and he - for this was this year's house wren protecting the nest - returned, singing, to the bush.

From 2020: A female house wren checks to see
if the coast is clear before leaving her
young to get food. (Margo D. Beller)

Shortly, the downy flew back, but to the bottom of the dogwood. She climbed a bit and recalculated her approach to the feeder. The house wren, meanwhile, flew to an upper branch near the nest box and sang. The downy came to eat at the suet feeder but soon flew off.

Watching the wrens from my screened porch is my usual morning entertainment. When I last wrote, the two wrens had put in enough twigs for the nest and were flying in the yard looking for food. Every so often the female would go into the box and the male would sing nearby. 

Then I went away for a few days. When I returned, things had changed.

In the first couple of days after I returned the female would be in the box most of the time, only coming out to eat. The male would usually fly close to the box and sing. Maybe he was telling her the coast was clear? I don't know, but she would go out for a time and then go back in. The male would sing from the nearby bush. He did not go into the nest box.

Downy woodpecker demonstrating how it hangs
beneath the suet feeder. (Margo D. Beller)

Then I saw something interesting one recent morning - the female flew out of the box holding a big blob of poop. That could only mean one thing: The eggs had hatched and now there were young to brood, feed and clean up after. So I wasn't surprised to see the female now making more frequent trips out of the box. The male did not participate in the feeding but I know from past years the two adults should soon be shuttling back and forth to feed the young, which will have grown to fill the box.

For now, however, both parents are defending their young. If another type of bird is in the dogwood and comes too close to the nest, as the downy did, the wren behavior becomes more aggressive.

I am not an ornithologist. I only know what I observe. And it seems to me the wrens' behavior is different depending on the size of the other type of bird and whether that bird has a long, pointy beak. 

So a downy or other type of woodpecker would be chased off because it could, if it wanted, put its beak in and grab a young wren with its long tongue. However, a cardinal, with its stout, seed-cracking beak, didn't seem to be a threat. (The pair I saw one morning that flew to a branch were more interested in that bonding activity known as "the kiss.") A smaller finch, such as a goldfinch or house finch, gets chased off even though they are seed eaters. 

However, a blue jay or its cousin the crow would definitely not be welcomed. (Years ago I saw a jay snatch a young wren that had fallen to the ground.) Neither would squirrels.

A blue jay is a predator of baby birds such as house wrens.
(Margo D. Beller)

Another unwelcome bird is the all-too-common house sparrow. These birds don't want to eat baby wrens but they have been known to pull out the young and take the nest for themselves. When house sparrows flew to the dogwood one morning the male wren flew at them while the female came out of the box and blocked the opening. When the sparrows refused to leave I came outside and they took off. I'm not sure if the wrens appreciated my help but the female went back into the box while the male sang from the nearby bush.

I reckon that sometime in the next week the food shuttling will begin. In the meantime, I've removed the feeders that hung closest to the dogwood. It is getting to that point where the birds will want protein from insects more than they'll need fat from sunflower seeds. Plus they'll have to take insects back to their own young. I still have one feeder out for the birds but that will soon be inside for the summer, too.

A Day In the Life of H. Wren

About 10 days from the end of April, I read several reports of house wrens returning to areas of New Jersey close, as the wren flies, to where I live. I had been avidly awaiting this news for weeks. Two days later, with my husband steadying the ladder, I hung the nest box in the dogwood tree, which had beat the odds and come back to flowering life after I had the dead wood removed.

The nest box in the dogwood
(Margo D. Beller)

Hanging a nest is an annual ritual. It started when a friend gave me a small, decorative bird house that I hung in one of the apple trees. It soon drew a house wren, perhaps the only bird that could have fit through the small opening. I hung that bird house out every year until it fell apart. I've used a sturdier (and slightly larger) nest box ever since, first hung in the one apple tree I didn't take down and then in the dogwood so I could see it more easily from my seat on the enclosed porch.

I hung the box and waited. And waited.

Seemingly the day after hanging it the weather turned winter-like. Northbound migration was altered as birds avoided the north winds of the northeast and traveled up through the midwest. Seedllings were left on window sills because it was too cold to plant them. The down quilt stayed on the bed.

Finally, at the very end of April the winds turned around, the temperatures warmed dramatically and the migration floodgates were opened in my region. One early walk I heard house wrens calling. On May 1 I heard the same call from my yard. A bird checked out the nest box, my feeders, the immediate area. Would he find a mate and would she want to nest in my box?

Yes and yes, a day later. Hooray.

Thanks to having more time to spend on the porch, I could see details I'd missed in previous years.

House wren from a previous year. I haven't tried to take
a picture of this year's pair yet. (Margo D. Beller)

On May 3 the pair took turns bringing large sticks to the box to create the nest where they will likely raise two to three chicks. (The Cornell Ornithology Lab people say it could be as many as 10, but that would be too many for this box.) Each bird came back with sticks too large to fit in the doorway as held in its beak. Each bird had to re-learn that if he or she turned his or her head, the sticks could be put inside. Or, if the stick was thin enough, the bird could just ram it through the hole. Both birds had to do this many times. It became comical to watch.

But they kept at it. The next day, May 4, it was only the female working on the nest, bringing in smaller sticks to put on the finishing touches. As far as I could see the male did not go into the box. I could tell which bird was which because he sang from another branch. She did not.

On May 5 it rained. There was some movement in and out of the box by the female and singing at dawn by the male. However, I was inside for most of the day and so do not know when or where any mating took place. Because that is the next step - the female has to lay eggs and she has to sit on them on the nest they made. 

Once again I regretted not buying one of those minuscule cameras I could have put inside the box and get an entirely different view. If they do what I've seen other wrens do over the years, the female will be in the box much of the time and the male will be singing nearby. If a larger bird it considers a threat - such as a house sparrow interested in taking the box for itself (it can't fit through the opening but that doesn't mean it won't try and destroy the eggs) - the wren will drive it off, if I don't first. When the female needs to get a meal he will stay close to the box until she returns.

Feeding the young from the outside. (Margo D. Beller -
From 2020 when I hung the box in the apple tree.)

Once the chicks hatch their mother won't leave them unless she has to eat. At that point the male will sit close by. Then she'll return to feed them and keep them warm. When they get bigger both parents will only go into the nest to feed them. As the young get even bigger they will get noisier and will be fed by both parents from outside the box. 

The whole incubation/nesting process will only last a few weeks. At some point I've yet to catch the parents will stop feeding them but will call the young from nearby - you have to leave the nest to get a meal, kids. The young will fly out and the nest stay empty. The family will hang out around the yard for a time, maybe a week or so, and then disperse.

If I am lucky, another wren - or maybe the same male - will find the box, bring a female that approves of it and they'll use the sticks I'll leave in there for their nest. At the end of the year the house wrens will head south and the box will be taken down, emptied, cleaned and stowed away until next spring.

It is an annual ritual that brings me closer to the life of a tiny, plain, brown bird that graces my yard for a few weeks. 

Catching Up (Again)

It has been over two months since my last blog post because it is only now, with the rain coming down as I write, that I can sit still and try to make sense of the annual madness known as birding during spring migration. 

In late April the unusual warmth prompted
the cherry blossoms at Greystone to open.
(Margo D. Beller)

Phoebes, redwinged blackbirds and chipping sparrows were among the early birds I found in such places as Greystone. The crowd of juncos that mobbed my feeders over the winter and roosted in Spruce, to his annoyance, disappeared as soon as winter's north winds were replaced by unusually (for April) warm winds from the south. White-throated sparrows that had been very scarce in my yard during the winter started showing up, the males flashing the bright white of their breeding colors. These will soon be gone, too.

In early March a deer got into my euonymous bushes by pulling down the netting. I reinforced the netting and hoped for the best. Thanks to the April rains and warmth many other plants started growing around the neighborhood, giving the deer much easier access to a meal than my yard. The leaves not eaten by the deer are now fully grown and there are new buds where there had been browsing. As usual, these shrubs will be fine.

There are times I wish my yard was a Quality
Deer Management Area. 
(Margo D. Beller)

When we had a long period of warmth in early April I and many, many other retirees or landscapers went to the local Agway and bought our plants. Mine were a pepper and what turned out to be four (not two) basil plants. But days later, when I was going to plant them and the cannas I had divided, it turned way too cold to put them outside. Frost and freeze warnings in April? Yes indeed.

So I waited and fussed until there was finally a good day to do the plantings. Once that was finally done I could concentrate on the birds.

For decades I would go to work, watch for what birds I could find during my commute or lunch hour, and then fuss that I could not be out there looking for more. I did not have that problem this year in my "retirement." When the winds shifted around to come from the south the floodgates opened and the birds passed through. 

Be careful what you wish for.

In late April we went to the Ocean City (NJ) Welcome Center built over a treed island that provides all types of shorebirds a place to breed. Hundreds of great and snowy egrets, black-crowned night-herons, yellow-crowned night-herons, glossy ibis, little blue heron and, not found in New Jersey until recently, white ibis everywhere. I took over 100 photos with my camera. Some of these birds were extremely close to the walkway where we humans stood gawking and photographing. We come here only once a year because Ocean City is quite some distance from our home.

Glossy ibises (Margo D. Beller)

Being retired means I can travel to places early on a weekday morning, mindful that there are plenty of people driving to work. Most of the time I bird alone, walking in areas that will later draw walkers (with or without dogs) and bike riders. I can walk at my own pace, faster than my husband's, and go into areas where he would balk. 

I was in one such place when I went down a steep, rocky incline and then had to lean hard on my walking stick to get me back up to my car. Unusual for me, it was Saturday afternoon and at that moment a man and his son drove up, got out their mountain bikes and plunged down the trail I had just left. A close call and a lesson learned about inclines and Saturday trips. 

An unusual picture. White Ibis has been extending its
breeding range northward, and this bird just sat here and
posed for me. Having a camera handy is unusual for me, too.
(Margo D. Beller)

I referred to this as madness, and it is. It is too easy to move into the realm of obsession. I look at the bird lists and I see people who drive to three or four places in a morning (to my one or two) or who go into restricted areas like a Superfund site or who bushwhack their own trails, all in the pursuit of recording birds on a list they'll file with eBird for others (like me) to see and be envious over. They use apps such as Merlin to identify (and perhaps draw out) birds they want to list and/or photograph. These people are out in all weather, at all times of the day. (I wonder how many of them are retired, too.) Or, they go on one of the many field trips held at this time of year, with a guide to find them as many birds as possible to justify the cost.

I was like this on a far lesser scale back when I worked five days in the city and could only bird as much as I wanted on weekends. Sadly, now that I am at home and my time is my own I find I tire more easily and feel the effects. But when I am not out there I feel something akin to withdrawal, and then I must go out as soon as I can.

I am very aware that spring migration will soon be over for the year. By the end of May there will be birds on nests and the forests will be quiet as the young are protected. It will get very hot, very humid and very buggy, even in the early morning. Walking won't be as interesting.

One of the quiet places where I like to walk - Patriots
Path. The spring rains created lots of standing water 
on both sides of the path. There will be lots
of mosquitoes soon enough.
(Margo D. Beller)

Birders, like many who live in NJ, will head to the shore and fight the heat and bugs to look at the water birds. The forest birds I'm trying to find now - not in their bright breeding colors and not fighting for territory using song - will be passing through on their way south in the fall. Another year will soon be over.