Hi Catherine,

You wrote:
> Today we had a House Wren excavating the sawdust that is in it.
> So now I have questions. Is this late for the wren to be nesting? Will
> they nest in a box that is several feet away from very active feeders? We
> are quite thrilled and have the spotting scope set up to watch it. The wren
> is working right now as I write this. Is there any special nesting material
> I should be putting out for it?

What's happening is that a male is preparing a nest --one of several,
sometimes many-- for a prospective female. She'll come along and, if she
likes the way he's done things, she'll add the remaining 5%-10% that needs
finishing, and the rest is a frank and friendly discussion of genetics.

Now, here's the footnote no-one likes but needs to know if you're gonna
encourage them to nest in your yard: male House Wrens are known assiduous
egg-destroyers and nestling-killers within their territories, using their
sharp bills to pierce eggs and stab other birds' hatchlings, and have been
recorded as cleaning out many other small passerines in their territories.
If after a couple of years you begin wondering why you're not seeing juv
Song Sparrows, robins or towhees, it may not be just the neighborhood cats
getting them this time. Back East, many people who put up wren houses ended
up removing them or stopping them up as the wren showed its
take-no-prisoners techniques for dealing with nest-site and resource
competition. Species which suffered from House Wren depredations were
Eastern Bluebirds, Northern Cardinals, Mourning Doves, Carolina Wrens and
others.

That said, The Birder's Handbook by Erlich et al, says that such behavior is
"inhibited while [the wrens] are tending their own eggs", small comfort,
and their ruthless ways did mitigate somewhat the impact of another
competitive cavity-nester that was similarly competing with and overwhelming
native species, the House Sparrow.

For a good historical take on this, read the book 'World of Watchers' by
Joseph Kastner, an entertaining history of ornithology, esp. the chapter,
'The Independent Midwest'.

Sorry if this rains on the parade, but there's more to wrens than charm.


Cheers

M

Michael Price When I found out that seven of my years
Vancouver BC Canada was only one of theirs,
mprice at mindlink.net I started biting absolutely everything.
-Max Carlson (Ron Carlson's dog)