Carolina wrens nesting in fuchsia hanging basketRe CAROLINA WRENS nesting in
hanging baskets or the like: a few years ago C. Wrens nested in a plastic bag
containing rubber belts for the lawn mower! the bag was hanging on a nail
against the house under the floor of my roofed back deck (house is on a hill so
there is a walk out basement on the side with the bag - it was above my head),
so plenty of shelter, yet easy access to the yard and spiders and insects in
garden equipment nearby. I could see the nest thru the transparent bag. 3
Young.
I always have them nesting around here somewhere and this year they
successfully fledged 3 young from one of those little woven, round-bottomed,
pointed-top nest baskets that one hangs up somewhere - mine are under the roof
of my front porch. Now one (or more?) of the wrens sleeps at night in another
one of those baskets on the other side under the porch roof (I have 3 of those
hung up under there).
I leave my big, browned "not-so-evergreen" Xmas wreath up on my front door long
after winter because I like the way it smells and it is always nicely decorated
with natural plants (by me). One year a Carolina Wren built a beautiful nest in
the center of the wreath against the door. It lined the whole thing with soft
green moss and laid its eggs.
As soon as discovered the nest, I stopped using the front door and put ladders
in front of the step to the porch to keep people from approaching the door. We
all had to use the door from the garage. Sometimes I stood nearby to observe
the babies in the nest and take a few photos and later they successfully
fledged, I think.
Sometimes I put the old wreath on the side wall of my recessed front porch and
now and then the wrens build a nest in the center of it over there.
This year I heard that monotonous vocalization (that Lindsay described) from
the parent around the time the young were about to fledge. For a while one baby
stood on top of the nest basket, as the parent chattered away, then baby went
back into the nest. A couple days later they were all gone from the nest.
I live by Cayuga Lake (so a little warmer here in winter), and I have Carolina
Wrens here all winter visiting my many bird feeders, and have had for at least
a decade. I think there are as many wrens here as ever and that they survived
this last "real winter" OK, perhaps due to bird feeders -- although I think I
am one of the only residents on Lansing Station Road that keeps feeders full in
winter (& all year round).
Donna Scott
Lansing
----- Original Message -----
From: Lindsay Goodloe
To: CAYUGABIRDS-L
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2014 1:32 PM
Subject: [cayugabirds-l] Carolina wrens nesting in fuchsia hanging basket
I was interested in Dave Nutter’s recent reports on a pair of Carolina
wrens that successfully nested in a hanging planter on his back porch. It was
just a few days after his first report (7/18) that we noticed Carolina wrens
carrying nesting material to a hanging basket of fuchsia suspended from a beam
under the ceiling of our otherwise unenclosed back porch. By the weekend of
7/26-7/27, we suspected that they were incubating their clutch. August 10 was
the first day we observed food being brought to the nest, but the eggs may have
hatched a day or so earlier. My wife saw an adult bringing food to the nest
early in the morning on 8/21, but the nest was empty by the afternoon, and so,
to our great disappointment, we totally missed what we assume was the
successful fledging of the young. We never peered into the nest (a domed
structure with the entrance located on the side facing the backyard) to count
babies, either. The nest location was about 10 feet from our back door and five
feet from a kitchen window from which we could observe the activity. Since we
spend very little time sitting on the porch, the birds took little or no notice
of us and flew fairly directly to the nest when delivering food. We once heard
them making nervous-sounding vocalizations when a seemingly oblivious chipmunk
loitered for awhile on the ground under their nest location until we drove it
away. My wife also once saw the wrens drive away a downy woodpecker that landed
briefly on a post near the nest. Though we rarely heard the male giving its
full song during the nesting period, at least one of the birds (the male?)
spent an amazing amount of time (especially in late morning and during the
afternoon) repeating monotonously the brief slurred trill call that is one of
the wren’s common vocalizations. It gave this call from many locations close to
our house, but perhaps its favorite calling perch was the handle of our lawn
mower, which was for some days parked on our porch about ten feet from the
nest. We believe that the frequency of calling increased as the fledging date
approached; if so, it suggests that the vocalizing was directed mostly at the
nestlings. Perhaps some learning of the call goes on at this period. We’ve
hardly heard this call, or any other, since the young (presumably) fledged.
Over the many years that we’ve lived in our South Hill house, we’ve
occasionally had house wrens and chickadees nest in the hollow top of a post at
the corner of the porch, but having any bird make a nest in a hanging basket
was a first for us. The poor fuchsia plant showed signs of getting very thirsty
as the nesting period progressed, but it survived (albeit with no blooms at
this point). We are wondering how frequently hanging baskets (or other
planters) are utilized by Carolina wrens (or any other species) as nest sites.
Two instances in Ithaca in the same season might suggest that it’s not a rare
occurrence, but I can’t recall any other reports in previous years (which,
given my memory, proves nothing). Perhaps this post will spur some
recollections of others. In any case, our wrens have made this a fun and
memorable summer for birds even though we’ve seldom gotten out in the field.
And a couple of other thoughts. For decades, we’ve had house wrens
nesting in our backyard in bird houses that we’ve provided. The last wren house
fell apart a couple of years ago, and we have not replaced it. So now we have
no house wrens, and for the first time (to our knowledge) we‘ve had a pair of
Carolina wrens nesting around the house. Is this a coincidence, or do these
wrens exhibit interspecific territoriality (I haven’t researched this point in
BNA)? Also, last winter was the sort of brutally cold season that is supposed
to result in high mortality on Carolina wrens, yet we had a pair around our
feeders all winter—perhaps the same pair that nested here this summer. Have
others noticed any decrease in the Carolina wren population this year? If not,
perhaps feeders are mitigating the losses that this species formerly suffered
during harsh winters.
Lindsay Goodloe
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