November 3, 2017

Empty Nest #10
Bozeman, Montana
2017

A wide shot, showing the entire structure of the nest from the last two photos. That it came from inside a bird house is evident in its tall, square shape. The bird house was originally built to attract mountain bluebirds but I do not think it has served anything but house wrens. The house wrens build this incredible tower of rough twigs to bring the floor up to the desired level relative to the opening in the bird house before building the final nest out of soft grass and feathers.

The wrens are also very tenacious builders. If they start building a nest somewhere we don’t want one, we will pull the starter twigs out and get rid of them but the wrens often just come back and start over. Last year they started building nests in the end of the loader frame on my tractor. I removed twigs several times in a couple of hours and finally had to stuff the opening with rags to make it unsuitable for a nest. They just moved to the other side of the frame and started there. Finally, on stuffing that opening with rags as well, they moved on somewhere else.

Note the third unhatched egg on the edge of the nest. There was actually a fourth egg right next to it, but it rolled off and broke on the driveway when I was carrying the nest to my shop to photograph it.