WRENS AND NUTHATCHES AND TAKING A CHANCE

The accompanying essay was written long ago enough that I was still placing two spaces between sentences, and long ago enough that Golden Retrievers siblings rather than a Goldendoodle pup counted on my companionship. I wrote about baby wrens dying in a birdhouse near my kitchen door.

I thought then, “Never again,” birds in that hanging house. Death hurt too much. But I hung the house on a balcony wall when we made a move in 2017. This week of quarantine, of pandemic, I am watching a Nuthatch pair claim ownership of it. 

It may be a ruse, birds do that – wrens may pretend up to twelve nest sites — 'let creatures of the woods think we are in residence here, let intended harm focus here, or here, while we raise our brood in a secret place.

It may be a ruse. I even hope it is. Their chance of success is statistically slim.

Like this Nuthatch pair, life so easily catches my attention, delights me, causes me to call for “More, please.” 

Death means not to let life live. Death designs despair, it distorts my view of everything. But—I hung the house in 2017, and Nuthatches seem to think it is worth their attention. 

Tomorrow, I will write of Scooter, of the fun of his eating his toothbrush, and other lively things. But, today, I am remembering an essay.

BROKEN HALLELUJAH 

July 4, 2008

It began well over a week ago.  A wren pair has selected the never-before-used birdhouse hanging on the north wall of our house. Oh, it has been temporarily inspected but never finally selected. 

These lovely wrens (I initially thought were nuthatches), inspected the house, squabbled with sparrows that wished them to move on even though the entrance to the house is too small for sparrows, then selected, and set about building a nest – twigs, Golden Retriever hair, leaves and grasses. The bird book says 4-11 eggs, 14 days incubation, 14 days from the last hatch to first flight (fledging).  In a matter of days, activity increased, the pair stayed busy, and cared not one whit that we, or our dogs, were nearby. 

It was delightful, watching nest approaches and departures; watching them hop onto or under the glider, under and through the deck railings, and fly to the neighbor’s dogwood tree, seemingly the last or first leg of their journeys for food.

Was this their first brood?  Were they overwhelmed by five squirming young in the nest, demanding food every 20 minutes?  “Spiders please.”  

“No, now I’ll have a juicy insect, thank you.”

“My turn!”

“Move over.”  

Squealing, demanding, growing strong voices.  Hallelujah!

Then, came a night of thunder and lightning, and the day that followed was filled with lusty baby cries for food but the absence of provision.  It was mid-morning when I admitted the wrens had not come to the nest.  It was mid-morning when my awareness became obsession, watching, waiting, begging parents to appear. 

Was it Sunday or Monday when I began having my conversation with God about this?  I hate the life cycle.  I’m thinking God should intervene.  It is God, after all that cares that the sparrow falls.  I want nothing to do with wrens falling.  It’s God’s job to answer babies in a nest squealing persistently, driving me to the edge of vomiting, absolutely to the bottom of a pool of sorrow.  I can’t escape the cries, I can’t escape the longing for the landing of a five-inch adult, for an alternative to death.  How many babies?  I have no idea.  “God, I cannot bear the cries of baby birds.  How can you bear the cries coming from this world?”  I don’t get it.  

I call bird experts.  

“Sometimes, if babies are fledging, parents will leave for a day or so, trying to force babies to leave the nest.  They will be in trees nearby.”

But it isn’t time for fledging.

These parents are not in trees nearby.

“There’s little you can do.  It’s unlikely that you can find spiders and insects enough to feed a brood every 20 minutes.  Let nature take its course.”

“Its course” is what nature took and with it, my heart, my sorrow, my anger at having my Hallelujah broken by an unbearable waiting.  There are no parents.  After three days, being very nearly unable to be sociable, and without the means to be at peace, on the third morning the birdhouse was quiet.  The cry for life ended.  

Yesterday, July 3rd, after a morning out on the boat to view Tall Ships in Commencement Bay, after a morning of my quarrelsomeness and a wish for rage, I walked home from the marina to bury bird babies.

Off the hook the house came, into the ground just below where the house hung went the hand-hoe, and deep enough was the hole dug before I released three screws and lifted off the wooden roof.  There, in the smallest of cylindrical nests lay bodies of five feathered siblings.  So small.  So dead.  Such sorrow.  Perhaps the parents, too, are dead, victims of what?  What would take both parents?  Or are they alive, young, and have abandoned the brood? The storm? I will never know. 

I reveled in the willingness of these birds to go about their business while people sat at the picnic table, while dogs snoozed on the deck beneath their nest.  We loved watching them hop over and under things before making a last leap to or from the nest opening, before and after flying off to find food.

Loved it.  Loved it till our Hallelujah was broken; loved it till it hurt too much.

One at a time, I lifted the five bodies from the nest. Too tiny.  Too still.  Fully feathered but fragile I lifted them, saying, “I’m so sorry.”  I placed them on a bit of nest material and closed their deep grave.  

Why weren’t these babies granted freedom?  I hate that they weren’t.  I hate the pain I feel as I write this.  I hate that it happens, again and again. 

“Welcome this little bird to your yard and garden by placing several houses around your property,” says the article about wrens.

I’m not sure I can.