Welcome back to the blog! All of these posts have been about chickens, so I decided that it is time to break the tradition and instead discuss my experience with a different bird. With that being said, let’s just jump right on into it.
In my family’s garage, we have a shelf with tools, bottles, and other such objects. One day, as I reached for gloves, I noticed a spherically-shaped amalgamation of twigs with a hole at the front. Inside, two black eyes stared straight into my soul. Talk about a jumpscare. I must have activated the “thing’s” fight-or-flight response as well, because it rocketed straight toward my face but thankfully was only aiming to escape rather than assault. I peered closer to the nest and saw tan-colored eggs, but the bird started aggressively calling for backup, so I decided to retreat before being confronted by the Avian Avengers or whatever. I wondered, “how did the bird enter?” After a thorough examination, we found a hole in the corner of the garage door – barely large enough for a small bird to squeeze through freely.
It only took a couple of weeks for the eggs to hatch! One flock, or batch, tends to have four or five eggs, and from observations it seemed that the success rate, at least for hatching, was significantly high. Sometimes there may also be an extra egg thrown in there from other brood parasites, but that’s a different topic of discussion for another time. Just as a PSA, the babies are very ugly-cute, but trying to handle them may not be the best decision. Not only are the babies sensitive, but it will also frighten the parents if caught red-handed, and though I am not positive, it may also cause the parents to either reject certain children or abandon the nest entirely in which case – game over.
I am almost positive that this type of bird was a wren of sorts – perhaps resembling the one displayed on the right. I have also always been interested in observing wildlife; eventually, we set a remote motion-sensing camera up, but it was not appreciated in the slightest. After a few days, we found seemingly random pieces of poo all over our front porch and garage floor. The recordings showed that after being fed, the hungry child would instinctively do a 180. You may know where this is going, but the parent bird would gently take the fecal waste from the baby as it was being ejected and deposit it somewhere in our garage to annoy us – I kid you not, this is not a joke. Some people may think that is disgusting, but I honestly thought it was intriguing. For those wondering, yes, I would absolutely include the footage in this post (for scientific purposes of course and nothing else), but I would have to dig deeper in the file archives for them. Those things – they made us cover our camera with newspaper out of sheer fear! They did not even pay rent! Regardless, this was a reminder that the behavior of seemingly simpler organisms can actually be quite interesting and perhaps somewhat rewarding to observe at times. If only I had been able to record footage of what happened outside of the garage!
As always, thanks for reading, take care, and stay tuned for the next post!
I think it’s cool that you let the birds nest in your garage and took an interest in them, especially by setting up the camera. I had a similar thing happen at my house – we have an outdoor deck outlooking our backyard plus the woods that are on our property, so there’s a lot of wildlife. The same bird comes back every year to nest in a little lamp we have on the deck wall even though there is so much space to nest in the big outdoors right next to it. My dad tried to stop it at first but eventually stopped and now we just let it do what it wants.
Such freeloaders! I live in Pittsburgh, and our old backyard used to have a massive hill. Within our neighborhood, there was a park with no hunting. Having a sympathetic father, he would feed a lot (and I mean A LOT) of animals, including racoons, deer, foxes, squirrels, and many birds. He is originally from Minnesota and is fascinated with the birds here. We always track the cardinals, blue jays, and other types of Pennsylvania native birds. He even buys specific grain for them (modern Snow White). I think following wildlife is so interesting. We name all the deer in our backyard, and they are not even afraid of us anymore. It sounds like the bird situation in your garage. I thought it was funny that they intentionally used the bathroom outside your house however.
That’s such an interesting story! My family has had birds nest outside of our house, but never in our garage. It sounds like we were lucky, since we could appreciate the ugly-cute chicks from a distance without having to worry about them making as much of a mess. I’ve always been a bit of a fan of birds, so I also thought the art of common PA birds was interesting. In my area, we typically see robins, sparrows, and the occasional cardinal or woodpecker. I don’t think I’ve seen many wrens. Some of my favorites are the not-quite-backyard birds, like great blue herons and barn swallows. Overall, great post!