Friday, May 23, 2014

DAY 77 - COUNTING DOWN TO THE 50TH

Good Morning, Class of '64
House Wren in Garden - Unknown
Singing Wren
Wren - Lynn Gould
Again this year a wren pair has prepared a nest in the hole that a woodpecker pecked in a front porch post several years ago. All through the day they fly in and out of the brown, spindled post. If the behavior repeats itself, as in years past, another nest will be made on the other side of the porch for a second family. A woodpecker made a hole in that post, too - probably the same woodpecker. 

If the porch posts are ever replaced or repaired, the wren's will need a new home to raise their family. A wren box would seem a castle to them after incubation and parenthood in the cavity of a porch post. For now, though, the wrens are good company, and they make nice neighbors.

At about this time fifty years ago, most of us in the class of 1964 were preparing to leave the nest in the valley we'd known for a lifetime. Fledglings, we were, about to fly off into a world much bigger than we had ever known. Like the baby wrens being raised in the porch post, we were nurtured and protected until it was our time to fly. The baby wrens of other years had eventually flown away; the baby wrens of this year will fly away, too - as did we.  
Wren Songs and Description
Wren - Jim Hautman
Among the dwellings framed by birds 
 In field or forest with nice care, 
 Is none that with the little wren's 
In snugness may compare.
William Wordsworth
Wren - George Servais
For the poor wren
(The most diminutive of birds)
will fight,
Her young ones in her nest,
against the owl.
William Shakespeare
Wren and Birdhouse - Susan Bourdet
Thus the fable tells us, 
that the wren mounted 
as high as the eagle,
 by getting upon his back.
Unattributed Author
Wren - Nigel Artingstall
God gives every bird its food, 
but he does not throw it into the nest.
Josiah Gilbert Holland


Wrens Up the Valley
(Porch Post Wrens)

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