Wren and Catbird Are Back

My fingers are typing more slowly than usual this morning. I’m feeling the after-effects of spending the entire day in the garden. It was a great day, but I’m afraid I had to spend a lot of my time pulling weeds—our cold wet April has left me very behind on cleaning up the early spring monsters.

Great news, though—the catbird arrived yesterday. I looked up at one point in the midday and there he was lunching on some bugs disturbed by my digging, just as though he had never left. The catbirds are handsome and sleek with dark gray feathers, like something Cary Grant would wear. It’s impossible to forget what they’re called because their call sounds exactly like a cat’s meow. In the evening they hang around in our bushes making strange noises, but they can also sing beautifully. They’re in the mockingbird family and their song sounds very similar, although simpler.

After living here so many years, I know fairly precisely when the migratory birds of summer will be back. The wrens arrived just a bit late because of our cold weather, and have now been here a week. Since their arrival they’ve been busy setting up in the little bird house that hangs from one of my dogwood trees. The hole in the wren house is carefully sized to allow the passage of only the tiniest birds. The wrens fit nicely, as they’re only 4 1/2 inches long. That small entrance hole is a source of immense frustration to the larger, fatter sparrows, who try incessantly to squeeze themselves in. They can get their heads in far enough to see that the house would be perfect! But even though they push and strain, they just can’t get their whole bodies in. They’re so shameless they keep trying to get in even after Mr. Wren and his bride have moved in. This drives the wrens absolutely berserk! They’ll fuss at the top of their voices and even strafe the sparrows’ backsides with flyby passes. The sparrows stolidly ignore them and keep trying to push their stupid selves into a hole they can never fit.

I have a ball watching the wrens at their nest-building. The male wren always arrives first. He sets up his territory with a burst of bubbling song, and keeps it up all day long. In between songs, he starts carrying small twigs into the birdhouse. This takes a lot of dexterity, as he’s maneuvering twigs of four or five inches through a hole the size of a quarter. Several days later the female arrives. She checks the house out thoroughly and takes her time about it. She’s popping in and out, flitting up to the roof, checking out the view and the neighborhood. Meanwhile the male is putting out a continual burble of ingratiating song. “Don’t you love it! I did it all for you sweetheart!” Sometimes I’ve seen wren females reject a house outright. They fly on to another garden and some other wren. But even if she stays, the male’s troubles aren’t over. As often as not, she’ll climb inside the house and start taking sticks out. One by one, each twig he carried in there at great expense of effort will be dismantled, and he’ll have to start the whole thing over. Can’t you just imagine what she’s saying? “What were you thinking?” That bachelor décor has GOT to GO.

Sometimes I think Mr. Wren must be the most henpecked bird on earth. But he may have his revenge. My bird book says that male wrens will keep more than one female going if they can find enough good nesting sites. Can’t entirely blame him for stepping out, if that’s true, but wow! That means he has not one, but two sets of bossy females and children to take care of. The amount of energy that must take—can you imagine?

(Thanks to Carla Finley on Flickr for the great catbird photo.)