The babies have arrived!

Earlier this week, Nathan was expressing some frustration that there was no indication of the wren eggs hatching. But, then as the days went by, I noticed both parental wrens out and about. They are running to and fro with food in their beaks. Twice, I even noticed one of them carrying away something that might have been part of an egg shell (it would be interesting to research this since I don't know if birds dispose of their chick's eggs).



At any rate, I did two things today. I checked the House Sparrow nest for eggs. Sure enough, there were four speckled eggs. Since House Sparrows are invasive species, I didn't have a problem with removing the eggs. Nathan would like to keep them in a collection (drained, of course). I didn't keep or photo the nest, but it was an interesting conglomeration of grass, feathers, hair and even plastic, all in the square shape of the nesting box. That was the morbid part of my day.



The wonderful part was checking the wren's nest. The Carolina Wrens took up a home in our Purple Martin hotel--which has yet to attract Purple Martins. At my first look, I could see two beaks poking up. The chicks are very silent, at least when I was there. I'm pretty sure there are at least three chicks in there, but it's hard to tell. There were four eggs to start with. Then, because none of the kids are tall enough to check inside to see, I took the camera out and took a few photos:




The wren's nest is a lot prettier than the sparrow nest. Wrens like moss. An interesting thing that Nathan taught us about wrens this year is that the male will begin building several nests (up to six). He will then take the female on a tour of his nesting sites and she will pick the one she likes best. Then, she helps the male finish building. Our funny male wren started nests in five of the six holes of the hotel and the female picked the bottom middle. We feel really lucky!