NEVER UNDERESTIMATE A MAMA BIRD

So because of various reasons, including an occasional attack of lethargy and/or just plain forgetting, we still have a Christmas wreath on our front porch.  Now, it isn’t a glitzy type of wreath, it really is more of a winter wreath than a Christmas one, with a ring of cardinals over a ring of greenery.  But when we finally got around to paying attention to the wreath, we found that a house wren had started stuffing leaves and grasses and, in short, making a nest right in that wreath. 

Well, house wrens are not as colorful as cardinals, jays, and finches, but they have a lovely song and are small and not bothersome, unless of course they decide to inhabit something you thought was yours.  Once, years ago in another house, we had two beautiful baskets of ivy geraniums on a deck outside a big window, and house wrens took those over, to the detriment of the plants.  But it was fun watching the eggs hatch and the babies grow.

So today I tip-toed over to see if I could see anything like an egg in the nest.  What I couldn’t see, because a house wren is very much the color of its nest, is that the mama bird was in the nest and when I got too close, she flew out and scared a scream out of me.  So I went and got the camera and took a photo of the wreath/nest from as far away as I could get, and I don’t plan to get close to that nest again for quite awhile.