April 22 - Carolina Wren

For the past few weeks, we've been engrossed with a family of Carolina Wrens. I've always liked these birds with their delicate shades of brown and rust, and I was very happy when we found one of them building a nest in a flower pot right by our window! We had a front row seat for a thrilling spectacle.

In early April, we spotted five tiny off-white eggs in the nest of twigs and grass. There they stayed through some very cold nights, finally to emerge about two weeks ago. Here's a picture of one of the parents (I can't distinguish between the male and female) feeding them bugs and spiders. One morsel at a time, they kept the hungry mouths fed.


On the day that the chicks fledged, one of the parents would take a bit of food in its beak (pictured) and push it into the mouth of a waiting chick, but then pull it back out again! It did this repeatedly - enticing, I suppose, the youngsters to leave the nest and get some food on their own.


One at a time, they emerged from the nest...


And faced a brave new world.