I have made and put out bird houses for the last three years, hoping to attract a pair of Eastern Bluebirds, but I have not even attracted a Tree Swallow. Zip.
This spring, I took down the houses I had scattered throughout our woods, cleaned them up and changed some fronts where red squirrels had gnawed the holes. I then mounted them in the open around my bee yard, hoping that the openness and light would make up for a few lost bees.
About two weeks ago, I spotted a House Wren checking out a couple of the boxes and bringing a twig to one of them. Then, nothing. Last week I checked the boxes and there was no activity in any of them. However, two days ago, I noticed a House Wren again checking one out, and as I watched, she brought all sorts and sizes of twigs to the box and proceeded to build a nest.
Some of her twig selections were on the optimistic side.
“Is this more like it, oh critiquer?”
“And by the way, that hole you cut isn’t round, ol’ wood butcher!”
So, Cornell lists the gestation period from 9 to 15 days. Hopefully in a week or so, we’ll have a hatch of little wrens. Of course, I’m bringing to new hives with about 60,000 bees to her front yard today. I suspect, if she’s on the nest, there’ll be no conflicts.
In the 13 years we have lived here, we’ve only had a few nests here and there that we knew about. We’ve never had one in a bird house. Hope springs eternal for a few new HOWR’s as neighbors in late May.
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Dick,
Good job getting that cute wren to park there. That wren looks pleased. I know from past experience that bluebirds can be fussy about the exact direction the door faces. Even that varied depending on where and how the weather blows in your particular yard. I think they liked nw n ne in my yard. There were woods to the north.