My Alarm Clock These Days

Here he sits early in the morning in my kaffir lime tree which sits in a pot on my deck.

 

I think he is checking carefully to see if that movement he saw was me or just the shadow  of the sun.  

Next he begins his morning grooming. One has to look good, because these males are sometimes singing for a new mate while his old mate is still brooding on the nest!!

 

My goodness!!

 

And then it is full throttle four hours...and hours...and hours!

Noisy Neighbors

House Wren, Troglodytes aedon

The wrens have taken over.  They have tried to build in my bicycle helmet and my garden tool tray and my husbands canoe...all because we left the garage door open one day.  They are noisy and attract a lot of attention to their nest, which makes me wonder how smart they are anyway!  

This one above is building a nest in the former blue bird house from last summer.  The bluebirds spent most of cold spring darting in and out of this jar, but never began a nest.  The wrens took advantage of the empty space over a week ago and then declared it home.  She is not shy in moving in larger decorative items.

This house is just outside my bedroom window and this is the time of year that I leave the windows open to take advantage of the comfortable fresh air.  She or he is very noisy...very early!!

The Gift

Celosia or Cockscomb

Laced in a ribbon of perfection was this gift of unbelievable proportion that can only be appreciated by those who have been given so many gifts in their gray-haired days and this afternoon it fell in my lap.  Reading a P.D. James mystery, which requires some work on my part as my short term memory is challenged with the introduction of each new but well-described character, I took a glass of white wine out on the deck with the book in hand and fell into the chair sighing as I leaned back in the dappled shade of a late autumn afternoon.  Chores were done and party plans for a volunteer who was departing had been completed.

As I rested my head, I looked high in the clear blue sky directly above and saw between the dance of still-green leaves two osprey playing in sweeping lazy circles, perhaps getting into a Zen mood for their long journey south in the coming weeks.  The angle of the sun caught the soft snowy white of the underside of their wings with each circle they made.  Their dance had been well rehearsed in years before and it was a synchronized ballet of love and friendship as the steady breezes of changing weather caressed their backs and lifted them higher.

I turned back to my book, but soon was distracted by three red-naped flickers whose rusty call demanded my attention.  They were thrilled at the full larder in some dead tree limbs high above or perhaps they were just joyful at the perfect weather that had finally arrived after a hot summer.  They hopped from tree top to tree top in noisy joy acting like teenagers given an early break from school.

Before I could return to the story of the novelist who had hung himself (or was it actually murder?) the ducks in the river started laughing like old men as if some dirty joke had been told.  Their flat quacking laughter carried all the way up the river.  I could just see the Vs cutting the surface of the green water through the tree trunks as they moved back and forth calling names and laughing.

The final gift on this precious afternoon was the lilting song of the common house wren perching on the snag of a nearby tree to celebrate sunset.  The call was so pure and sweet and phenomenal because it came forth in such silver song from such a small brown bird.

Who needs pearls, rare orchids or Swiss chocolate when my neighbors provide this talent for free?

Martha Cleans House

Since we lost two 50-year-old tulip poplars not long ago, I happened to look out my living room window to check the yard just as a major storm was approaching, and I saw something strange on the doorstep of the birdhouse that the chickadees had been visiting.  Did they get a delivery that they had not noticed?  I had not heard the UPS truck.  (This is not a great photo as I was hurrying to miss the rain.)

I remained on the porch and decided to watch just a little longer and what did I see?  

(We had a tornado warning beeping on the radio as a distraction, so you will forgive my blurry shots.)  Here is a wren peaking out of the door and throwing a beak full of the stuff to the ground.  This was a deranged Heloise or perhaps that nasty noisy neighbor in Bewitched.  As I watched she continued to fling more grasses through the hole and threw them high into the air with a twist of her head.  She did not become discouraged that the wind blew them back into her face and over the top of the roof.  Was chickadee interior design so bad?  Was it a feng shui issue?  Did it have bed bugs?  Clearly in a big re-decorating mode, this Martha Stewart wren hopped up and began to clear off the roof as well!  She WAS a bird on a mission!

I am not so amazed that she has thrown out the chickadee nest that I say them create just this spring and which perhaps they had abandoned ( I do not watch my neighbors that closely because I do have a life.), but more amazed that she is ACTUALLY using a bird house.  In the past, as you may recall, my resident wrens behave like hippies and have used nail buckets, canoe bows, the end of the gutters and folded down lawn cushions, but never one of my bird houses!  This should be interesting!

Taking the Plunge

I was deeply involved in cleaning up around the back yard and looking for some old trellis stands that I had lost. I was hoping to find them behind the empty planters at the far side of the house. I was a woman focused only on my mission and almost lost my balance when five wrens flew with kamikaze speed from their little Williamsburg bottle bird house that we had carefully mounted just under the shelter of the deck. I had been watching the busy mother wren for days rushing back and forth feeding her chicks. Suddenly, today, while I was directly beneath the bird house, they decided to take their first flying lesson.

I could feel the rush of air as they almost careened off the top of my head in their attempt to gain altitude when they flew like crazy fighter pilots into the nearby brush at the edge of the woods. There was much incessant chattering (wren chatter sounds like a hissing leaky faucet) from mom and dad as they watched in panic each bird landing on a twig and falling over into the grass or landing on the plastic screen of the deer fence and rotating upside down like a tired gymnast as their grip loosened. I couldn't help but smile as I watched one baby bird swinging upside down and staring up at the sky, not the most dignified or safest image.

While watching this drama I looked carefully through the green jungle and counted three little wrens with chubby round bodies like brown golf balls and no long up tail to assist with balance in flight or landing. Their underdeveloped wings barely kept them airborne.

Mom (or dad) got one of them to a nearby small tree and proceeded to feed the little one an insect. This may have been a visual bribe as the other baby wrens became more interested in learning how to navigate and headed toward mom and dad.

The day was cool and there was no nasty weather forecast in the days ahead. This family may just make it. I left them alone so that they could concentrate on survival...and I thought raising my kids was sometimes very tough.