radartower

Outcome? Failure.

Until Sunday, we had a pair of Bewick’s Wrens and their five babies living in a nest box in our back yard. The only down-note of Father’s day: the discovery that all of the young birds had died within the last day. I haven’t seen the adults since Friday. I’m very disappointed. Bewick’s Wrens have huge personality for such little animals. It’s all in the tail. Look left (tail flip). Look right (tail flip). Left again (flip, flip, flip). The very caricature of cuteness. Secretly (on the Internet), I dig it.

I put the nest up in February. I started waiting. When a House Sparrow selected the nest, we assisted the native birds with a bit of HOSP management. I watched the Male Wren select the box, court a mate, and haul grasses and fur all the live-long day. It got so that I looked for the birds every morning before work and every evening when I returned. Bird stewardship is new for me; I was stung with the over-enthusiasm of the n00b.

Discovering the Cornell NestWatch program (http://www.birds.cornell.edu/birdhouse), I started tracking the nest data. [Citizen science programs are cooler than almost anything. Megadeth, for starters.] NestWatch is a good example of such science, holding down the #2 Google search ranking for “citizen science”. Almost 80,000 nests have been monitored since 1997.

Once signed up, the site guide you towards a “certification” test. This is a transparent tactic to ensure that you read their (helpful) Code of Conduct for hawtch-hawtchering nests. I read it. I learned something. I took (and passed) the ten-question test. Then I configured my sites: one nest box (lat / long) near human-modified terrain. One pair of Bewick’s Wrens inhabiting the aforementioned box. One clutch of five eggs, laid in late May.

I entered data every week. Now I have a final result. As Cornell phrases it: “Outcome: failure”.

Yeah.