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.
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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