Of Wrens and Their Houses

 

Last year, around the 10th of March, I began hearing a bird I didn't remember ever hearing before. I tried to identify it by its song. But no matter how I described it, I had no luck. 

And it was so elusive it was weeks before I was able to get a very poor photo of it. But that was enough for me to finally identify it as a Carolina Wren. I've been obsessed by them ever since.

So this year when I heard this little one singing, I knew what it was.

I've been hearing it for a week and a half, but again, couldn't get a photo until this morning. It was singing from the top of the neighbor's tree. I had to point and shoot sideways through the window and these are the best pictures I got.

If I try going outside to shoot it, it's gone before I get the door completely open. 

Call them elusive, evasive, slippery, shifty, cagey or just plain shy, but I'll keep trying for a really good picture. It gives me something to do. 😉

I've often thought about putting up a wren house. Even before I discovered the Carolina Wrens I was aware of all the house wrens around. But I became serious about putting up a wren house to try and attract a Carolina Wren to it. 

I was going to buy one and then I remembered the wren house my mother-in-law gave me years ago that I had never used. It was a craft item she purchased from a local man. The nest part of the house is an O'Doul's beer can. It looks and sounds Irish, so it seems appropriate for me. 

I would be over the moon if a Carolina Wren called it home, but I would be happy with a Jenny Wren, too. 

Just as I was unaware we had Carolina Wrens in our area, I was also unaware until now that a favorite poet had written about them. The poem is from Mary Oliver's book Why I Wake Early.

   the wren from Carolina

     

Just now the wren from Carolina buzzed

        through the neighbor's hedge

a line of grace notes I couldn't even write down

                 much less sing.

     Now he lifts his chestnut colored throat

       and delivers such a cantering praise -

                           for what?

For the early morning, the taste of the spider,

                for his small cup of life

that he drinks from every day, knowing it will refill.

     All things are inventions of  holiness.

           Some more rascally than others.

                       I'm on that list too.

      Though I don't know exactly where.

  But every morning there's my own cup of gladness,

and there's that wren in the hedge, above me, with his

                 

                          blazing song.