Wren In Doubt

 A House Wren! Those were the words with an exclamation point that popped into my head as I stood looking through my wife’s binoculars, the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds in my left hand. Mystery solved!
The “mystery” began this past, endlessly-long Michigan winter. My wife and step-daughter decided to decoratively paint some craft-store bird houses to display around the house. The paint was artistically splashed on and when done, my wife declared that hers looked like a clown house. Seeing it, I had to agree. It did share characteristics of a circus clown…color, design and even the shape. Deciding that it failed to live up to the standards of the house decoration that was envisioned, it was delegated to be repainted later, and traveled about the house until reaching its final winter resting place—my wife's gardening bench in the garage.

During the remaining long winter months, the birdhouse became covered with a growing mass of various garage items of my disorderly placement. With the spring gardening season fast approaching and a rather stiff talking to by the wife about “my junk” on “her” bench, I took action to put my things in their proper place. Clearing the gardening bench of my clutter, I uncovered the birdhouse and knew immediately what needed to be done. I attached a clip to the eyelet on the top of the bird box and hung it from a low branch of the silver maple tree behind the garage. “She’ll hate it hanging there,” I thought mischievously, admiring my work.

Later that day, I proudly pointed out it’s placement in the tree, thinking that this woman of class and good taste I’m married to, would immediately ask me to remove it from our yard, pointing out the travesty of hanging it where all could see. However, she simply stated, “It doesn’t look too bad there…But no bird will ever nest in it.” Staggered by this, I thought, “We’ll see,” and as I asked her if she had seen my car keys anywhere I contemplated my next move.

Spring arrived, and along with it, the songbirds. But not a blade of grass or twig entered the tiny, round entrance of the birdhouse. Birds busily sang and built and ate bugs and birdseed, but all shunned the clown bird house. Directly above it on the maple branches, a robin built its nest. Cardinals occupied our evergreen bush with their nest of grey-speckled eggs. Our bluebird box (bluebird-free for eight years) hosted its annual family of white-footed mice and a nest of angry hornets. But nothing took notice of the possibility offered by my wife’s brightly painted birdhouse.

Then, early in June, as I sweated and pushed my lawnmower past “clowny” the birdhouse, I was startled to see a twig sticking out of the entrance. Stopping the lawnmower (I look for any excuse to take a break from this soul-killing experience), I peered into the small, circular darkness and observed that it was indeed the start of a nest. A scattered mass of twigs and grasses covered the bottom of the box. This development thrilled me slightly, and as I continued to crush the life out of me with more mowing, I made a mental note to tell the wife.

Now the remembering to tell might seem easy, but fast approaching 50, it has become challenging, and she was not immediately available to tell. Fortune offered me a reminder when I nearly bumped my head on the birdhouse on my way inside to clean up. Once inside, I grabbed a pen and a Post-It note and wrote, “A bird built a nest in your birdhouse,” and sketched a small outline of the sparrow-like bird that I envisioned must be setting up housekeeping. I placed the note on the counter where I was sure she would see it and promptly forgot about it.

That very night, Mother Nature, being the cruel mother she can sometimes be, visited upon us a vicious spring storm--with wind and rain and tornadoes--tossing branches, leaves and bird nests from the trees. And typically, out went our power. So out came the generator to save the basement from flooding, perishables from perishing and tropical fish from facing northern climate temperatures which would have surely left them belly-up in a matter of hours. As I was running extension cords to the house, I noticed an unfamiliar birdsong. I followed the sound and spied an energetic little grayish bird stretching out all of its roughly four-inch body and singing in the branch above the “clown” birdhouse. Loudly he sang, jumping from branch to branch repeating a happy song. Then he darted to the nearby pole of our badminton net, stretched out and sang and sang and sang.

I could only assume this energetic new arrival was behind the nest-building. But what kind of bird was it? I strained to see but could only make out a small fuzzy gray. I now have to point out that most of my trouble seeing the bird is because I’m near-sighted and dislike wearing my glasses (when I can find them). So, my only notable observations at the time were of a small, gray bird busily singing a happy tune and darting from branch to branch to badminton net pole and that its proximity to the birdhouse indicated it may be responsible for the beginnings of the nest.

Strangely, I remembered to tell my better half about the nest-building when she returned before the Post-It note was discovered. (Later, she mentioned the “cute little bird drawing” on the note.) To my disappointment, she took the news with much less enthusiasm than I expected. In retrospect, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to top a weekend fly-fishing on Michigan’s Pere Marquette River with 11 other women, showered with attention from multiple male guides with all their talk of hackles and tight lines and exotic aquatic insects. And the vision of me welcoming her home, unshowered for two days due to the still noticeable lack of electricity, did not help matters. Her question after I told her the news was, “What kind of bird is it?” I wasn’t ready for this question. “I shouldn’t have been painting the porch,” I thought. “I should have spent my time in an effort to identify the bird and have the answer ready,” but years of marriage helped me file it away rather than say it.

My ego bruised, I turned to the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds and waited for my chance to identify the bird.

Now, caring about identifying songbirds is a recent development for me. I felt I was fairly good with the red ones (Cardinals), yellow ones (Goldfinches), blue ones (Blue Jays and Bluebirds), black ones (Crows, Starlings, Grackles) and mixed colors (Red-winged Blackbirds, Red-bellied Woodpeckers)--as well as all the waterfowl and upland game birds I have hunted. Lately though I felt a bit more pressure to identify every bird I came across. I can trace this need to identify things directly to my wife who recently began keeping a nature journal. Anyone who has ever spent time with a two-year-old will understand the adult version of this type of curiosity when embarking on a new hobby or activity. My wife's questions brought out a need of mine to answer them and has led to a large personal library of books to help identify the smallest gnat to the tallest tree in Michigan’s air, land, or inland seas.

Her new hobby led me to take a great deal of pleasure in bringing her things to sketch and write about. Bird feathers, black walnuts with squirrel teeth marks, pine cones, broken bird eggs, strange looking leaves, dead butterflies from the grill of the car—all I have proudly given her to draw. It's like the male crow that collects shiny things and takes them home to Mrs. Crow.

So that night, armed with Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds, I thumbed through and identified several possibilities based on my previous fuzzy observations. The next morning, the little bird was singing away on the badminton pole. His song was a bubbling musical series of sharply whistled notes of “Chek,” I grabbed the field guide and the binoculars I had left on the kitchen table, proud of how prepared I was. There it perched, grayish brown with barred wings and a light throat, a light eye ring, yellowish legs and beak, just as described in the field guide. As it met all the criteria of the House Wren, right down to the described song it was singing, I considered the bird identified, categorized, named and proclaimed good. A House Wren. When my wife appeared, I proudly announced the news.

“House Wren,” she said, “What kind of name is that?”

The House Wren

Troglodytes aedon

The House Wren is a common bird found in backyards across the country. This little brown bird loves nothing more than to take over all the birdhouses where it sets up its territory. It will destroy the eggs of other nesting songbirds as well as its own species, sometimes taking over that nesting site for itself, but often just being destructive and nesting nearby. Often a “wren guard” is placed on nesting boxes to prevent them from entering and destroying Bluebird eggs. It loves to eat small terrestrial invertebrates (spiders and insects, with over 95% of them considered pest species by experts) found by gleaning surrounding leaves and shrubs. The male may have more than one mate at a time, splitting his time between families. Similarly, the female wren may leave its eggs and take up with a second male to start a new brood and leave the first male to rear his brood alone. It has one of the largest ranges of any songbird in the new world—from the tip of South America in winter to the northernmost region of Canada in summer. It is a common sight in backyards…If you just take the time to observe.