Monday Meddling

I fooled with Mother Nature. I know I shouldn't, but just can't help myself. I carefully opened the blue bird house to see if the sparrows had any eggs. They didn't. There were obvious signs that the nest was the blue bird nest left over from last year. So I cleaned it out. And then hung a wren house in another spot, hoping the sparrows would take it over and leave the blue bird house to the blue birds. I put a pile of pine straw below each house to facilitate nest building.

Well, I'm not sure how that's going to go. Within minutes of hanging the wren house, the Carolina Chickadees showed great interest, one went in, came out, called to his friends and they came over to hop in and out. Then a Carolina wren showed up and told the Chickadees that it was, after all, a wren house. I don't think they have decided on who gets the spot.

Mr. Chickadee sez: I saw it first.

Meanwhile, the Mr. House Sparrow keeps flying up to the blue bird house and looking inside, but he doesn't go in. I am hoping they were just using it as a roosting site and without the nest, it is too deep to interest them. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird doing some sort of flight dance this morning - they would jump off a branch of the oak tree and twirl around each other to the ground, the fly back up into the tree.

Not like this: (picture only nominally related to post, but I found it while looking for bird pictures and I like it, so there)

I suppose the only answer is more bird houses!

The boyz say: Maybe we can get a real bird out of this!