We have wren babies!!!

House Wren at Wren HouseThe woodpecker babies are almost grown and occasionally visit the feeders by themselves. The baby ducks are the same size as their mother. At this time of the summer, the baby wrens get all our attention.

Fledgling House Wren!!!

 

Three Baby Wrens

Best wren shot of the day!

Wren Feeding

We think the baby wren on the right side of the picture sort of looks like Grandpa from the Munsters.

More Wrens

We ate dinner out on our deck last night, starting with chips and a nectarine salsa from Terhune farms. The wrens were active feeding their babies and the babies have grown and become more adventuresome so we can now see them from the opening in the bird house.

Mike set up the camera on a tripod with the remote. Whenever a feeding occurred, one of us would press the shutter release. Here are some of the better pictures.




Occasionally, when one parent is inside the house feeding, the other hands it an insect. Or should we say the other "beaks" it an insect. We used to call this a hand-off but now we call it a beak-off.



 

We grilled a nice fillet mignon for dinner but these baby birds enjoyed their insects just as much.

House Wren Feeding

The house wrens have been busy feeding their young. We still haven't been able to spot one, but we are happy to know they are being well cared for. Once, we saw both parents approach the nest. After one fed, the other transferred its insect to its mate so the mate could finish feeding.

Our cat is a little less happy. Although he's an indoor cat, we let him go out on the deck. One day, a wren was on the railing scolding him for being out.

Summer Wrens

When the wrens start catching insects and returning to the nest every minute or two, we can be sure there are baby birds inside. We'll be watching closely for little mouths to be at the bird house door soon.

House Wren's Summer House

This spring we put up an all natural wood wren house. The next day, there was a heavy rain and we saw a sparrow trying to get into the wren house but it couldn't fit through the small opening. We immediately ran out to nearby stores to get a house with a bigger hole. In the emergency, we settled for a tacky red mushroom house from Wal*mart that went unused until now. It looks like we'll have more house wren babies this summer. We hope with the perch on this model, we get to see some babies stepping out before they fly away.

Empty Nests

It's a bit of a sad day around our house. We didn't see the orioles feeding the baby birds this morning although we heard a baby oriole chirping. Around noon, Chris found a baby oriole two trees away from the nest being attended to by the male oriole. It still looks too small to fly to us but it must have. We didn't see it in the evening. It seems too soon to leave the nest to us.



We went around the front of the house in the evening and checked on the wren house but it appeared empty. We did see a few baby wrens flying around the trees with the parents but they were too fast to photograph. One landed on an electrical wire but that's no place for a baby bird.

 

While it's nice to see the babies grow, it happens so quickly and we'll miss them.
Perhaps we'll see the parents in the Caribbean this winter. 

A busy wren house

>

One disadvantage of living on a lake is all of the insects, unless you eat insects. The house wrens find the location ideal to raise a family. Chris first saw lots of feeding on Monday at the wren house and heard the baby birds chirping. We set up the bird cam but the photos didn't come out very good. So, we set up the DSLR with a remote control shutter release and waited. The birds feed every few minutes, so we didn't have to wait too long and we are happy to see each insect get consumed by these chirping baby birds. Both parents feed, but we can't tell them apart.

We also saw something we hadn't expected. The birds clean the nest by carrying off "fecal sacs" that the babies produce. These "disposable bird diapers" are produced by the babies' digestive system the first few days and make it easier to keep the nest clean. The parents drop them far away from the nest so the droppings don't leave clues about the location of the bird nest.

I know we are posting a bit too many pictures, but there are few hundred we didn't post.



     

House Wrens at the Wren House

Finally! Obviously we do everything we can to attract our little winged friends, and often we are disappointed when our efforts fail at attracting them. We seem to have had some success with the house wrens who are busily building a nest in the wren house we put out. Chris thinks they chose it because they have a lovely view out their front door of a blooming clematis. We can hear them from first thing in the morning and all through the day. Today we went out to two locations for birding, and we left the webcam on the wren house to keep an eye on things for us. Here are some of the best pictures of our resident house wrens.

House Wren from Rutgers Newark

 

 

 

We've been hearing wrens around our house, but haven't seen them in the shrubs or at any of our bird feeders yet. It was nice to see one this morning. In the last one, he was trying to have a little nap in the morning sun.

Birds from the Celery Farm in Allendale

We took a quick trip to the Celery Farm in Allendale, NJ. The yellow warbler was best photo that we got.

We spotted some wood ducks including what appeared to be an immature male just showing some adult colors.

 

 

Egret

Swans and Ducks

Cormorant

Baby Catbird

Swallow

Wren

Backyard Birds

House Wren

Robin

Baltimore Oriole

Groundhog

We got almost 30 minutes of sunshine today. Here's are photos of the birds (and a groundhog) that were out.

The house wren has a mate

 

 

The house wrens have been courting and singing. This morning, there was a flurry of activity and they consummated the relationship on the ground before our very eyes. For the rest of the day, there has been quite a bit of carrying twigs to the nest, some too big to fit.

We are thrilled to have a third nest (after the robin and oriole) on the property and this is quite a fun bird to watch and a great singer for such a small bird.

House Wren

 

 

We almost missed this little wren because we were so preoccupied with watching the orioles. The duck house is only a few feet from our chairs on the dock, and Chris looked over (instead of up at the orioles), and told Mike there is a tiny bird in the duck house. It was throwing out all the wood shavings that we placed in there for ducks. We read that the male house wren will select several nesting places and start them with some twigs, and then the female will select which one she likes and finish it. We're not sure which part of the process this was, but it was fun to watch.