A Very Trying Wren

Can you see that tail in the photo above? It's a wren that has been in my screened porch three times today. I've just let it out for the third time as I write this. It was has been a day of dealing with wrens.

This morning I heard a bird singing. I thought it was outside but then I thought maybe in the attic. When I went into the garage I thought I heard the rustle of something: bird or mouse? When I returned from errands an hour later I heard it again and thought I'd seen a flash of something.

Our attic is over top one side of the garage and there's space for a bird to get from one to the other. I left the garage door open and went to the attic but no sign of a bird. Later in the afternoon I was sitting in the loft where the door to the attic is, and heard rustling. I went down and opened the garage door. Then went back up and entered the attic. Sure enough a bird was there, a wren in fact. Too curious for its own good, I bet it got into the garage on Thursday when we were out shoveling snow.

I tried opening the small windows up there but it kept flying back and forth. Finally it went down so I knew it had gone to the garage. I closed the window and checked and no bird was in the garage. It had flown. Good.

Two hours later sitting here at my desk I looked up because of movement that caught my eye. A wren in the screened porch. How can that be?
Our porch has a very high ceiling with lots of beams. I have never had anything besides a few bees and stink bugs get in before. I opened up the door and waited by the window. The wren finally made its way out.


This critter was also making a racket on my beams but not in the porch. He was on one over the deck. Not sure what he was up to.

Not a half an hour later, movement again in the screened porch. The wren had gotten in again! This time I decided maybe it was coming through the hole we have drilled in the floor for the extension cord for the pond pump. To come up through that hole would require going under the porch decking for 10 feet but I don't know where else it could come in. Again the porch door left ajar and the wren left. My other thought was that maybe it was the spouse of the first and they'd both been in. No, I'd have seen two at a time.

Dusk was rapidly approaching when the wren showed up a third time. Now I think there must be a place where the screening is loose and it pushes its way in but can't go out the same way. Where? I don't know. I just hope that it forgets over night that there are tasty spiders in my screened porch and I won't have this problem tomorrow.