Those little wings are so much more developed in just two days. If you look back to Monday’s post, you can see how much he’s grown.
I keep calling it a him — of course I have no idea if it’s a male or female Carolina Wren!
Tomorrow morning will be my last chance to check on him for a while. We’re heading to Spain tomorrow, so I’ll have to get photos emailed to me from family staying at home. He may have fledged before we get back, but I hope not.
When Mama wren flies out of the garage early in the morning, I sneak up on the step stool to get a peek at our little guest-in-the-hat.
Baby wren is growing by leaps and bounds.
Barely 5 days old, it now really looks like a bird.
Its eyes are still closed, but the wings and the beak are now clearly evident. I think it has tripled in size since I first saw it on Friday.
The Mama sits in there with it most of the day, but doesn’t appear to by flying in and out very often. She seems unfazed by the construction being done in our driveway as guys are sawing wood out there for our new wood floors inside. She’s just focused on that little bundle of joy.
I doubt the other eggs will open now that it’s been 5 days since this one hatched, but I didn’t think this one would make it either, so I’m not giving up hope. In fact, I’m not ever giving up hope again!
You may have seen on my blog that a mama Carolina wren was nesting in a sombrero hanging on our garage wall. She was there for several weeks before Easter. As soon as I found the nest, we kept the door open, but who knows how many times she might have been locked away from them before that.
So today I decided it was time (they are supposed to hatch in 14-16 days) and I put the hat nest and eggs into the garbage can.
But when I did that, I counted 11 eggs and there were only 7 before.
I don’t know why I did it after I’d already gotten rid of the eggs, but I looked online just one more time for what happens when the eggs don’t hatch and what the mama does. All the other times I googled it I came up with nothing, but today I found a resource that says that birds will sometimes lay a second clutch of eggs later on top of the unhatched ones, since the nest is already made.
Oh no!
That would explain why there were now 5 more eggs.
So after I had a really good cry, my Mom convinced me to go out and try to save it all. I used a paper towel folded over like a pot holder to put the nest back in the sombrero. Then I took a tablespoon and gently lifted all the eggs I could find out of the trash can and into the nest and then I hung the sombrero back in the garage.
Checked a little bit ago and mama is sitting on the eggs again. I just hope there are some viable ones in there – think I got 7 back into the nest – hope some of them are the new ones, but that was all I could find. One broke and I couldn’t get the others.
At least I tried and I feel better. And I learned a lesson. Well, maybe two lessons – don’t move nests until there is absolutely no adult activity, and … keep the garage door closed all the time so they won’t make nests in my garage.
Or, (more likely) put a birdy – door in our garage!
Count them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven speckled little Carolina wren eggs. Sitting in a tree…wait, no, sitting in a …hat!
We’re had a wren flying in and out of the garage now for weeks. We tried to keep her from making the nest, but now that we’ve discovered it, we’re keeping the garage open so she can stay with her eggs.
This is an old Sombrero left over from a fiesta-themed summer party. Imagine my surprise to find that it’s become a stylish condo for Mrs. Wren.
Her cousin was nesting in the garage last spring — here she’s in a lovely blue and white porcelain flower pot. Sadly, opening and closing of the garage door before we knew she was there kept her from the nest too long and there were no babies last spring.
I’m hoping we found the hat nest in time this year.
For several weeks now, we’ve had baby cliff swallows in this nest high above our front door under the eaves. At first we could only see the edge of their beaks, and couldn’t tell how many were up there as they would come to the edge and then go back.
But they soon grew and began jockeying for position in the ever-shrinking nest. Five abreast, pushing up, up, and up to the edge of nest – they waited for mom and dad to bring breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And then they learned how to turn around on the edge of the nest and leave me with presents that required pretty much daily clean-up of the front porch.
Then one afternoon last week, I watched the mama (or dad) fly all around the nest, chirping intently and landing all around the nest — clinging to the side of the walls and landing on the hanging light fixture.
I’m certain she was saying, “Come on out, you can do it, just flap your wings, come on now!” They kept opening their beaks for food, but mama wasn’t bringing them food, she was giving them a lesson.
And sure enough, the next day, one lone little swallow ventured out to the lamp. He sat there, looking very alone and a little forlorn, with all his siblings across the way, safely cocooned in the nest.
But soon he was joined by another sibling. And for the last 3-4 days, they’ve all be flying around and around our house – soaring in the blue sky, chirping happily to one another — 5 not-so-little babies and two proud parents.
What a sight it is to see and their song is full of joy. I feel blessed to have been able to be a part of it.