Wonderful Wren
It’s a joy to have the UK’s most common breeding bird visit your property – just try to keep it away from the kitchen…
How one young bird got itself in a bit of pickle when it decided to enter one homeowner’s kitchen!
Ihave just been led a merry dance by a Wren. One minute I was sitting in the garden enjoying the spectacle of a group of newly-fledged Wrens, the next minute I am sitting on the kitchen floor rebuilding a kitchen unit…
It all started out as a typical pleasant Sunday morning. I was enjoying a coffee in the kitchen when I became aware of a high-pitched, ticking-type call that I didn’t immediately recognize – it sounded a bit like the warning call of a Robin, but wasn’t quite right, it was sharper and more frantic. Peering out of the window, I soon spotted the source of this mystery call, or rather, sources. There were at least four newly-fledged Wrens dotted around the lower part of my garden, all calling in an attempt to attract the attention of an adult that was busily moving through one of the flower beds looking for food.
Feeling thoroughly pleased with ourselves that a family party of these beautiful little birds were happily using our garden, my wife and I opened the kitchen door and walked out to sit on a bench from where we could easily watch their antics.
The adult Wren never stopped, scouring
the beds and the pots and the wall constantly. As soon as it found something, the young would call out plaintively and the adult would respond by flying over to one of them, stuff some invertebrate goodies down its throat before resuming the hunt for yet more food. When you watch an adult bird trying to feed demanding newly-fledged young, you really start to appreciate just how hard these birds have to work. You also get the chance to experience some truly rewarding birdwatching. Wrens may well be our commonest birds, but you don’t often get the chance to see them like this. We sat there with big smiles on our faces, as the birding show played out in front of us.
Immediately outside the kitchen we have a stone walled-in herb bed, a popular draw for Wrens, Robins and House Sparrows, who can often be seen searching it for food, particularly the large, collapsing Rosemary shrub and, sure enough, the adult soon headed over there. We watched it forage and then jump up on to the stone wall with a beakful of food. One of the young Wrens decided to swap calling for more direct action and it flew, in slightly ungainly fashion, across to the adult in a blur of whirring wings. It was soon fed, the adult hurried off to find more food, and the youngster, temporarily sated by its meal, started to look about its surroundings.
Uninvited visitor
But, instead of exploring these immediate surroundings, it decided to fly through the open kitchen door and into the house. This didn’t immediately alarm me as we have had a few birds come in through the back door on occasion, but they never stay in the alien environment for long
and are soon heading back outside again. Unfortunately though, the young Wren didn’t reappear, and, worried that it may fly into the kitchen window, I went looking for it. I soon found it, perched happily on the handle of the kettle on top of the oven, seemingly untroubled by the strange environment it found itself in.
I approached the bird slowly, putting myself between it and the window in the hope that it would fly towards the door, but the bird didn’t seem at all interested in going back outside. Instead, it dropped to the floor and scurried mouse-like under the oven!
Have you ever Googled how to get a Wren out from under an oven? I shouldn’t bother, it’s not very helpful. Instead, I decided to move back a bit and wait for the bird to reappear. It didn’t, and my wife went hunting for
a torch. Lying on the floor and peering under the oven wasn’t how I had expected to spend my Sunday morning, but that is what I found myself doing. I couldn’t find the Wren, though.
Disappearing act
Troglodytes troglodytes is the Wren’s scientific name and it literally means a Hole Diver – in other words, exploring dark crevices and holes is what the bird was named after.
Next to the oven are some kitchen units, and the wooden plinth that these sit on extends back towards the wall, but, crucially, it doesn’t actually meet up with it, leaving a 2cm gap – plenty big enough for a Wren to disappear through.
So, with my coffee getting cold outside, I sat on the floor unscrewing the plates that held the side and front plinths of the units together, I took them off to find several cobwebs, a couple of random screws, but, puzzlingly, no small bird. The floor of one of the units has a hole in it to allow the waste water pipe from the sink above to pass through. It was difficult to see from the angle I was at lying on the kitchen floor, but perhaps it was possible that the Wren had squeezed through it. I opened the under-sink kitchen cupboard to check and, sure enough, looking quite pleased with itself, there on top of the washing liquid bottle, was a young Wren complete with its bright yellow gape.
As soon as the cupboard was fully open, the youngster whizzed past me, wings whirring as it flew across the kitchen and straight out through the kitchen door, landing back in the herb bed, from where it immediately started to beg for more food. The bird was rescued! Safely back outside, while I was left kneeling on the hard floor, screwdriver in one hand, surrounded by assorted screws and disassembled kitchen units.
Mimicking behaviour
We have a tall, old, ivy-covered wall in our garden, the Wrens love it, it is full of holes and dark crevices, birds disappear into its depths and reappear sometimes a couple of metres away. The young Wren that explored our kitchen was just mimicking that behaviour. The dark spaces in which Wrens forage hold a whole host of food for them, with the most important being small beetles and spiders, I’m not sure if the young bird found any food on its explorations, but there were certainly a few cobwebs showing that potential food was present.
Wrens are brilliant birds, with a beautiful explosive song, they make great birdwatching, giving you the opportunity to watch bird behaviour close up, but if you want a restful Sunday morning, best not have one in the house.