So Many Babies

The catbird sat on the branch just below the wren nest box. It surveyed the ground below, looking for movement of a worm or insect. Then it flew down to nab its meal.

While it sat there, no house wren came out to chase it from the nest. For the first time in weeks the box was empty. 

Wren nest box, June 2026 (Margo D. Beller)

For the second straight year, after years of just missing, I saw the house wren chicks leave the nest and take their first wobbly flight to where a parent was no doubt calling for it. I was on my porch so I could not hear the parent, but I could see the three chicks as, one by one, they flew to the bare part of a dogwood branch. Each fluttered to keep its balance. One by one each moved to the leaves at the end of the branch and flew in the direction of the blue spruce's boughs.

This was a change. In past years, the wrens would fly in the other direction, to the shrubbery behind the flood wall. But this year a new neighbor had moved in and put up a wall so his dog could run in the yard. While he had put the fence well in from the property line to leave the trees and shrubs standing, the wall might've made the area too confining to the parents. So they led their young to Spruce, who had told me when the male first investigated the box in mid-April.

"They were here, Margo," he told me now, "but soon they all flew down to the ferns you have growing near me. I couldn't see them in the foliage. They might've flown behind your fencing."

This was on Tuesday, June 16, a week after my last post. In the interval the young had grown so big they could only be fed from outside the box. It was only a matter of time before they flew, I thought. And so, again, I was right.

I have not heard any of the wrens in the yard since then but there have been plenty of baby birds calling after their parents to be fed: cardinal, chipping sparrow, catbird, robin, starling, grackle, titmouse. But the yard is different without the sound of a singing house wren.

This fawn from several Junes ago was in the backyard,
under the apple tree and away from the street.
(Margo D. Beller)

Last year the box was empty only a day before another, or possibly the same, male claimed it and started singing. This year there have been no new takers as yet.

Meanwhile, in late May a doe appeared in the backyard nearly every morning, mainly eating weeds in that sheltered area behind the flood wall. I told my husband and MH's immediate comment was, "Is she pregnant?"

Memorial Day to early June seems to be the time when pregnant does give birth to one, two, sometimes three fawns. The fawns are hidden at first, spending their time sleeping like any newborn, surviving on mother's milk. We have found sleeping newborns in the yard in past years. So I understood his question. No, I said.

But I figured there was a fawn somewhere nearby. After a few weeks it would start following Mom around and supplement its milk diet with grass and plants. (A dangerous time for any unprotected plants as the young figures out what tastes good and what doesn't.)

The viburnum stands in front of the flood wall, with the fence
beyond. (Margo D. Beller)

So I was not surprised the other week when I found the fawn hunkered down in the area behind the flood wall. I couldn't see it from where I was sitting outside on the patio. But when first a chipmunk and then a squirrel climbed a tree and started their alarm calls, I went to see if a cat was hiding back there. Instead, there was the fawn. We stared at each other. When deer are small like this they look cute. It is when they grow and destroy my plants that I want to shoot them. (Same with baby Canada geese.)

Well, I said to it, at least your mother didn't leave you behind the deer netting where you'd make a mess trying to get out. (I now use an old garden hose to block the way in behind that fence.)

I moved and then the fawn bounded away in that herky-jerky way colts run, heading for Mom.

I figured Mom would not leave it there alone again and I was right. When I saw it behind the flood wall today, Mom was nearby, behind a privet bush. Both took off, going around the house next door, perhaps to the area where they'd have gone directly had the fence not been there. 

But they'll be back at some point. Whether house wrens are is another story.