Wrens' return makes house a home

By Ellen Scolnic

The yard had been neatened up, the fence repaired. Almost a year after the previous tenants left, and months after the landlord finally got around to cleaning up the place, I spotted a house wren holding a twig in her mouth, poised near the birdhouse in our backyard. The sight of the tiny brown bird immediately made me smile. Were the wrens back?

Last year, a family of house wrens built their nest in a small, painted birdhouse my son had hung from a tree in our backyard. House wrens are teeny-tiny nondescript brown birds. Their name comes from the fact that they like to make their nests not in trees, like most birds, but in birdhouses. The $3 wooden houses from the craft store that have a tiny, circular entry hole are perfect.

What the wrens lack in size and color, they make up for in noise. If you hear their burbling racket and trace the noise to its source, you'll be surprised to find such loud chirping emanating from such a tiny bird. It's as if they're trying to make up for their other shortcomings through incessant clamor.

Over the winter, I read an article that said most birds will not use a birdhouse that has nests from previous years still in it. It advised bird-lovers to clean out the birdhouse over the winter, making it attractive again to birds by spring. So on a day when our backyard was still coated with wet slush, I tried to enlist some help from my children.

"Doesn't anyone want to help me clean out the birdhouse so the wrens will use it again in the spring?" I tried to cajole my children so that I wouldn't have to climb the ladder myself.

"Please?" I begged. "You just have to take the bottom off the house, and then I'll nail it back on.

"Bird stuff is dirty," my teenage daughter protested. "There's probably dead bugs and germs in there."

"I'm watching TV," my son replied.

"Fine," I said. "I'm going out to fix the birdhouse. Let me get my coat and gloves. I'm sure I can balance the ladder by myself. You guys just stay and watch TV."

That did it. My son and daughter launched themselves out the kitchen door so fast I had to scramble to grab the hammer and nails.

We took the house down, pried off the bottom, and dumped out last year's cozy nest of twigs, interwoven with dryer lint and pieces of string. My daughter couldn't resist an "Ewww" as the nest fell out and blew away to the edge of our property.

I held the floor of the birdhouse back in place and my son hammered it back on. We restrung the string and hung it back in the tree. It would hang there unoccupied until that day.

Alone in the kitchen, I heard a familiar loud chittering. Sure enough, a wren with a twig in her beak was perched on my backyard fence, several feet from the refurbished birdhouse. As I quietly watched, the wren zoomed in, landing on the roof of the birdhouse. Quick as a flash, she crammed the twig in the hole and then entered herself. A second later, her head poked out and she flew away. But I hear her and her mate chirping all the time now. They come and go, poking sticks and other debris into the house, building a nest. They're back in the same house they rented last summer, and I couldn't be prouder. After all, I encouraged them to renew their lease.