Home Depot has these “kids workshops” on the first Saturday of every month. We went to one of them some many months ago and made birdhouses. These particular birdhouses had clear back walls, with the intention of mounting them on a window so you could watch what was going on.
We came home, hung one up, and I admit… I never expected anything to nest in them.
For many months that bore out. We’d look and see nothing in there.
A few weeks ago, Daughter came to us saying that something was building a nest in the birdhouse. Oldest did some watching and identified the birds as Carolina Wrens. We did some further investigation and sure enough, it was a pair of Carolina Wrens building their nest. A little while later, we saw 5 eggs and a dedicated Mother sitting on them. With a gestation period of about 2 weeks, we knew it wouldn’t be long before we saw something.
And today — Mother’s Day — we see something. 🙂
Just a few minutes ago Daughter came running in saying she sees something in the nest. Sure enough, there’s a baby! It must be only a few hours old given how just a few hours ago I checked the nest and saw nothing.
What a wonderful thing, and on Mother’s Day to boot. 🙂
It’s hard to tell but it appears that 2 eggs have hatched. I certainly see one hungry mouth and I am not sure about the other… I *THINK* I see another body in there, but I’m not sure what the deal is. Is it actually another body? Is it sleeping? Alive? Dead? Hard to tell, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out in time. My understanding is the wrens lay one egg a day, so I would guess that over the next few days we’ll see the rest hatch.
We did most of our observing from inside the house, but I went out and looked through the “door” of the nest box. I heard the tiniest little chirp, so high-pitched, so soft… but it’s all the little guy can muster right now at this early stage of life. It’s very cute, and very humbling to listen to.
How neat!
I would love to share some pictures, but there’s no way I can get anything useful right now. And while I may try to get some pictures, I’m wary. It’s my understanding if we approach the nest too soon it could cause the babies to fledge before they’re ready, and I certainly do NOT want that to happen. So, pictures will happen if they can, but I’m not going to risk anything.
Now… let’s see if we can finally get some of these Muscovy Duck eggs to hatch. We’ve had numerous nests but for one reason or other nothing went all the way. The current momma duck is very dedicated, so we’re hopeful that within the nest few weeks we’ll have ducklings.
Stuff From Hsoi 
That’s a neat idea for a birdhouse. We’ll have to make one of those for next year. Might have to buy a cheap webcam for it too. 🙂
We have a lot of bird houses, but generally fail to attract the type of bird that we want. We have wrens of some sort in our Purple Martin house. Some kind of black bird in the blue bird house and some more wrens on the birdhouse on top of the swing set.
The dog food bowls feed half of the Grackles and Mockingbirds in the state. I’m pretty sure I spend more on dog food for the birds than I do the dogs.
A built-in webcam would actually be a good idea, especially to allow the kids to see what’s going on without disturbing the nest. Or in our case, the nest has to be yea-high off the ground so to allow Youngest to see into things I have to hold him up. Camera would alleviate that.
Right now in our backyard we have…
2 pairs of Mockingbirds
a pair of Cardinals
a pair of Blue-jays
too many pairs of Chimney swifts
a pair of doves
a pair of wrens, though we can’t ID what they are, even with the internet
And they all get along just fine, well, except for the mockingbirds. However, they are very useful, so it’s worth putting up with listening to them squak. Every since they have ‘moved in’, we haven’t had any stray cats, opposums, or skunks. Seriously. I’ve seen the massive mockingbird male we have taken on several stray cats and even a loose dog, a Pit bull to be exact. But yet they leave us alone, and they leave the other birds alone.
I will say the most useful are those chimney swifts. Even when everyone has an infestation of mosquitoes, we can sit on the back porch and not be bothered, thanks to those swifts. It is cool to sit back and watch them fly around, catching and eating bugs.
That’s one reason I love mockingbirds. They don’t take guff from no one!
The wrens are the only for-sure thing nesting in our yard. But with our greenbelt behind us, we’ve got a lot more. I know a few cardinals are nesting nearby. And then the barn swallows are all over the place. It is fun to watch them, especially at dusk with the bugs. I love to listen to them twitter and chirp… very talkative.
I’ve been wanting to put in some hummingbird feeders, but interita keeps me from doing so.
Whats funny, is the wrens would scavenge stuff off of the other bird’s nests until theirs was built. LOL
We’d sit on the back porch, watch a wren fly to the dove’s nest, take a twig or two, fly back to her nest, then fly to the cardinal’s nest, etc.
Or watching the mockingbirds take on all the squirrels in our backyard. It’s like watching The Three Stooges.
Ha! Just need a little “Yakkity Sax” as a soundtrack.