Birding Notes

As I stood at the kitchen window after lunch today, washing dishes, a Carolina Wren came to sit on the top of a shepherd’s crook on the deck, just outside the window. The leafy tip of a Carolina jessamine vine curls up the crook and reaches out from the top of it, and the Wren sat beside it, almost encircled by it, and preened for several minutes. 

Though Carolina Wrens will often come to this same favorite spot to sing, this Wren was quiet, intent on a thorough and methodical preening, addressing first one wing, then the other, its sides and breast and back, and everywhere it could reach. The small cinnamon-brown bird with a jaunty white eyebrow, a white throat and buffy breast, fluffed up its feathers here and there and gave itself a good thorough grooming.

Just about the time I was finishing my own kitchen cleanup, it flew away. But I’m happy to know it probably didn’t go far and we’ll see it again. Carolina Wrens come almost every day to check out corners and crevices and plants around the deck for insect and spider prey. We hear their bright, bold songs and their trills and burbling and fussing. And I try never to take them for granted. They are a gift in so many ways, and we are lucky to have them living near. Sharing a home and domestic moments like this.