A Late Summer Disaster

It was a hot Sunday afternoon. I had talked my neighbor into helping me put up an awning on the house to shade the back deck. We put out ladders and a scaffolding plank to work on the side of the house.

A House Wren had picked the northwest corner of our house, off the deck in the back, to build his nest two springs ago. A piece of the vinyl soffit sagged down there and made an entrance that he found attractive. He would sit on the top of the swing frame or the rail of the deck and proclaim his territory from first light. Then there was a pair. Then there was evidence of a family.

As spring turned to summer, and the baby birds could be heard, I was always afraid that they would bake in the hot roof corner. The parents flew in and out to the insistent chirping of the babies. This song often woke me. After a few weeks of chirping and activity, there would always come a day when you could see the faces of the babies peek out of the hole in the soffit, seeming to wonder where their parents went to all the time. Then, in a few hours, they would be gone. Their song would end, to be replaced by the male again sitting somewhere, proclaiming to all around that this was his territory.

Last year I did not get out the ladder and fix the sagging piece of soffit, so the wrens were back again. Now it was late July, far past time for baby birds, and I was on a ladder near the nest. I popped down the piece of soffit and the nest material fell out. I put the piece of soffit back up properly repaired and I hung a pottery birdhouse in from the beam where the soffit attached to the house.

A few minutes later, I saw the House Wren on the rail of the deck, looking at the destruction of their home. The little bird's beak was agape with the heat of the day, and all I could think of was that she was looking in horror at the catastrophe. They investigated my upgrade offering, and yesterday there were twigs in the new house.

This morning there is no wren song. Perhaps the house that I offered as an upgrade is too small. Perhaps the memory of their corner of the roof, and the nest in which they raised their family, and the destruction of the twigs and feathers scattered on the deck was just too much to bear.