Dear Marlene,
I so enjoy your reports! Esoecislky now that we have downsized to an apartment.
When we lived in Vienna, VA up near Hunter Mill area & W&OD Trail, a typical
leafy suburb, we had all the usual wildlife. We quickly discovered that the
garage housed wrens as well as our cars, bikes, and usual garage paraphernalia.
I guess they had been living in that garage way before we came in 1996, and
inhabited the same shelves there all year.
There seemed to be two families on either side. Like a two-car garage and a
two-wren -family shelter. Somehow they fit through the upper corners of the
garage door, and were accustomed to noise, I guess, of the cars and door
opener. I even saw one slip under the heavy new rubber flap we put on the
bottom of the door!
Mind you, we lived in middle of forest, with the “back 40” of our almost acre
that we left natural, with plenty of tall of brush along fence for shelter.
But car noise and fumes for the babies? I guess life without rat snakes or
hawks or other predators was preferable, though we once had a nest of
copperheads in a corner.
When we cleared out the house after the sale, the permanent-resident wrens kept
coming to the same shelves, even after we had completely cleared them of
cartons of spare floor tiles on one corner, and our miscellaneous bins in the
other corner near kitchen door.
After a final run-through of the house, the garage was thoroughly bare...except
for one thing—the wrens:-). There were no eggs or young, so I reluctantly swept
the old nests off with gentle broom swipes. Sadder to do that than to move.
Barely two hours later, we came back to leave some things for new owners. We
were astounded to see a brand new nest on the shelf nearest the kitchen
door—with various leaf pieces, other bits of unidentifiable vegetable matter,
pine needles, and what truly amazed me was a gorgeous upper layer of woven
daylilly stamens!!!
How on earth that little bird or those birds built such a fine nest so fast in
Two Hours was a miracle. How many dried or half-dried daylilly stamens could
they gather in a couple of hours, not to mention all the other materials. No
way I was going to clear that amazing feat of engineering and fast work away.
The buyers would just have to learn to cohabitate with the wrens and all the
other wildlife as we did!
And I also live pawpaw blossoms. Happy to learn the whippoorwill arrival
connection. Like a sign that yummy fat larvae are fast turning into yummy
night-flying bugs for them?
With no real Winter to speak of this year, I fear for all plants and creatures!
Perhaps this virus and enforced slowdown of pollution will compensate. But at
what dreadful frightening cost?
Stay safe down there in beautiful
Albemarle!
Rebecca F. Samawicz
samawiczr@xxxxxxxxx
Cellphone: 703-615-6023
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