Springtime Is In Full Effect: Carolina Wren Edition: Egg Me!: Part 2

Here's the link to Part 1:

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2019/04/springtime-is-in-full-effect-carolina.html

As I posted in the previous blog post, springtime is in full effect.  A pair of Carolina Wrens' spent a few weeks building a nest on the porch.  Then, surprise!  They laid eggs.  It has been ten days since my first post and a few things have happened.

First up, the female Wren laid two more eggs.

She ended up laying one egg per day for four days.  Now comes the hard part for her, sitting on the nest.  This presents a problem.  When I walk out on the porch she doesn't want to move off the nest, but if she sees me looking at her, she takes off flying.

She's about taken my head off a few times.  So I have to "Use the force," and walk quickly by the nest without looking at her.  If I take my time, or look her in the eyes, she comes flying straight up my nose.  I'm not kidding.  One time she came pretty close to picking my nose as she flew by.

I can't blame her that time.  It was early morning and the sun hadn't come up.  I was standing by the nest, and looked in her direction.  Since it was dark, I couldn't see her, but she saw me.  That's when she panicked, and zoomed by me.  I'll admit, I did not take it well.  I hadn't been scared like that in a long time.  But again, that one was on me.

The incubation period for Carolina Wrens' is 14-17 days.  I'm not sure if that's from the day the first egg was laid or not.  Since it's so warm down here in Florida I'm going to guess the incubation period is going to be closer to 14 days.  So in about 3-4 days I'm going to start looking for baby chicks.  But I'm going to do it extremely carefully.  I might also use a shield.  We'll see.

Springtime Is In Full Effect: Carolina Wren Edition: Egg Me!

A funny thing has happened the last few weeks.  A pair of Carolina Wren's have been building a bird nest on the screened in porch.  I know this leads to a few questions.  First, "How did they get in?"  Well, one of the screen doors is bent at the bottom.  They learned they can just fly down to the ground, and hop onto the porch.  The crack in the door is plenty big enough for them to scoot through.

The second question would be, "Where are they building this nest?"  Well, that's the funny part of this story.  They are building their bird nest in my old bird feeder.  It was old and broken so I had it sitting in a chair on the porch.  I guess they thought it would provide a nice place for a nest.  So for two weeks they built it.

For two weeks, when I was sitting in my chair, I would happen to catch a glance at the Wrens on the porch.  I thought they were hunting for bugs and lizards.  Namely, because they would be on the porch for a short time, and then head out.  What I didn't know was they were building a nest.

What really makes me question the bird-brained madness of it all is, if you remember, I put up five bird houses around the property.  I wrote a blog about it back in early March.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-birdhouse-community-apartments.html

I was told that Carolina Wrens build several nests around the area, and then decide to choose the best one.  So I figured that this would end up being a decoy nest.  I ended up taking some photos of the nest.

The next day I decided to take a closer view.  That's when I saw this:

That, my friends, is a Carolina Wren egg.  I guess they chose their nest.  So today I went out to check on the nest, and I found this:

That is definitely two eggs.  Now we're starting to get a clutch of eggs going.  I'm going to keep checking on the nest a few times a day.  I want to take photos of any eggs as soon as they appear.  So stay tuned.  It won't be long before they hatch.