A Wren on the Porch

Earlier this Spring, we discovered a Carolina Wren had made a nest and laid eggs on one of the outdoor shelving units on our porch. We were delighted at this turn of events and more than a little bit proud of ourselves that this bird trusted us enough to build its nest so near a center of our activity.  

At first, the mother would fly out of the nest as soon as we walked past to get our gardening supplies or water the plants, sit in a nearby tree branch, and squawk angrily at us until we went back inside. We made a point not to get too close to her eggs and try to disturb her as little as possible, while still maintaining the garden...not an easy task and one that led to the neglect of several tomato seedlings and the skipping of a scheduled staggered planting.

Day by day, though, my life got busier, I became more focused on getting back on track with my daily list of important things that needed to get done (gardening included), and I started using the porch again just like normal, trying to save plants that are struggling in this unusually cool Spring.  I started allowing the J-Rex and her friends to play on the porch again. We stopped talking about being careful not to stress out the Wren-mother. None of us noticed that we weren't hearing the her shrill, angry shrieks anymore.

Two days ago, my mother-in-law asked if any of us had seen the mother bird. This was the first time in about a week and a half the rest of us had even thought about her. No one could remember the last time we heard her chatter or saw the darkness in the nest that was our only visible cue that she was inside and incubating her eggs. In fact, we hadn't heard any Wren calls in our backyard in quite a while. 

I am not sure if the nest has been abandoned due to our human disturbances in the vicinity or if the mother was killed by one of our local hawks or stray cats. What I do know at this point, is that those poor eggs seem to have been left, un-incubated and un-cared-for, for at least a week now.  I hope I'm wrong and that the mother has simply learned our patterns of porch use and makes a point to avoid the porch during that time, but, as time goes on, I doubt that possibility more and more.

I have looked online and it seems that, had I noticed the abandonment of the nest earlier, I might have had a slim chance of saving the eggs. Though even then, my success would have been unlikely, especially given my lack of knowledge about Carolina Wrens. I feel guilty that I might have been the cause of the situation and even more so that I didn't even try to save the babies when I still had a chance. 

I am afraid to move the nest or even talk to the J-Rex about what happened until I am certain of the fate of those six fragile eggs, for fear that her heart is going to break like mine is breaking right now.

There are many people in the world that might think I'm crazy or melodramatic when I react to the relatively violent cycles of life in nature with such sadness.  Perhaps they are right.  On the other hand, maybe I'm simply a bit more connected to the wildlife around me than the average person. Sometimes I think I feel more sorrow for a loss of this sort than I do for the types of losses that might devastate other people. 

Of course, as a writer, I tend to take it all symbolically: It's almost Mother's Day and this mother is gone. Her babies won't be hatching Mother's Day weekend as we had predicted and been looking forward to. Our observation of this life-cycle is cut short and a sad, sad lesson is learned in the ways of nature and man.