Sunday, June 19, 2005, 19:46
Small Birds with a BIG Attitude
For the last couple of weeks, the wrens have been active in our yard.
If there's one thing you can say about wrens, it's that they do everything "full steam ahead."
Wrens are teeny-tiny brownish birds, but when they want to sing, they SING. Tweet-tweet-tweet-tweety-tweety-tweet -- Tweet-tweet-tweet-tweety-tweety-tweet -- Tweet-tweet-tweet-tweety-tweety-tweet.
And they do not sit still to sing. They flit from tree to tree, bush to bush, singing at the top of their lungs, signing their hearts out. They want the world to *know* they are there.
And when a wren wants to build a nest, it builds a NEST. Wrens are not content with using a few sticks and calling it good. Certainly not. They stuff the bird house with so many sticks, you wonder how they have room to lay eggs in the nest, much less, have room for the babies to hatch out and grow until they are big enough to fly. Which, for a wren, isn't very big, since they are so small to begin with. But still.
Quite a few years ago, before my father-in-law retired from his position as a seventh grade science teacher, one of his end-of-the-year extra credit projects was for his students to build bird houses. My father-in-law would donate some of the bird houses to nature preserves, and we also had a steady supply of new bird houses. One particular bird house was a big barn of a bird house. As bird houses go, it was huge, four times the size of the biggest bird house I had ever seen up to that point. The walls were painted bright white, and the roof was jet black.
We put the bird house out in our yard, wondering what kind of bird would want such a big house. Within a half a day, a tiny wren had discovered the white bird house with the black roof. And that little wren was determined to fill the bird house with sticks and make a nest. Day after day, we watched the wren bringing sticks and bringing sticks and bringing sticks. Since the house was so big, the wren must have decided that bigger sticks were needed, because sometimes the minuscule wren brought sticks that were so big, it could hardly fly with the sticks clutched in its beak.
After a week of trying to fill the bird house with sticks, the poor little wren gave up and found another more suitable house.
Even though the wren gave up on the great big bird house, I had to admire the wren's tenacity and determination, it willingness and its courage to even *try* to build a nest in such a large house.
Wrens are tenacious and courageous in other ways, too. Quite a few years ago now, we watched a pair of wrens attacking a huge bull snake that had made its way up the pole and into the wren house. The bird house was five or six feet off the ground. With its head in the bird house, the snake's tail nearly touched the ground. My husband got an old fishing pole out of the basement and tapped the snake, trying to get it to back out of the bird house. It finally did -- first one coil came out, then another and another. I thought it was just the snake's head in the bird house, but it was more than that.
Before my husband intervened, the wrens had been attacking the snake, flying at it, hitting it hard enough to make it swing back and forth. You could actually hear them making contact with the snake when they hit it. The wrens were not going to give up, and when my husband started tapping the snake, the wrens sat a ways off, chattering and scolding and adding their moral support to his efforts.
When the snake finally dropped to the ground, it slithered off into the bushes, tail rattling against the leaves to let us know that it didn't appreciate being chased away from the bird house.That's what bull snakes do, by the way, is rattle their tails against the leaves, to make themselves sound like rattlesnakes.
Wrens are the embodiment of the attitude, "I think I can, I think I can." Maybe it's a good thing they're not any bigger than what they are -- otherwise they might start thinking about filling up *my* house with sticks and building a nest. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
Friday, June 17, 2005, 17:44
Stop and Smell the Roses
I suppose William Shakespeare had a point when he wrote in the year 1595 in "Romeo and Juliet" -- "What's in a name? that which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet."
Still, the word "rose" calls to mind flowers that are pink or red or white or yellow or any-color-in-between with a scent so sweet you would like to put it a bottle you could open on winter days when the wind is howling and the snow is falling and you think nothing in the world will ever again be green.
Fortunately, I don't have to wait for the roses because my rugosa roses and wild roses are blooming right now. The rugosa roses have been blooming for a week or so, and the wild roses are just starting.
The rugosa roses, with their single layer of petals as big around as the palm of my hand are a fuchsia, vermilion, glow-in-the-dark deep pink. Every morning on my way down to the barn, I walk behind the lilacs to admire the rugosa roses and to stop to smell their heavenly scent. The rugosa roses have been growing long enough now that they are spreading out and sending up new shoots, nearly waist high bushes with deep green foliage.
The wild roses, which I have planted in several different locations, range from a pink that is so pale it is almost white to a lovely shade of "frosting pink." They're not nearly as tall as the rugosa roses, only knee high, but the single-layer-of-petal flowers, which are half as big as the rugosas, smell even sweeter, if that's possible. Some of the wild roses in my flower beds have been growing there for 30 years.
And every morning, too, when I stop to admire the roses, I have to laugh when I see the bumblebees. They are in ecstasy, rolling around in the center of the flowers, bathing themselves in bright yellow pollen -- buzz-buzz-buzz!!! -- righting themselves and flying off to roll around in the pollen of the next flower.
The one thing I really like about the rugosa roses and the wild roses is that they are so tough. They don't need to be cut back and covered in the fall. They don't need special fertilizer. They don't need special pesticide dust. They make it through sub-zero temperatures just fine, and then the next spring, they grow and bloom and spread out some more with no help at all, except a little extra water once in a while.
What difference would it make if roses were called "skunks" (for example) instead of "roses"? I honestly cannot say. Then again, Shakespeare wasn't actually talking about roses, he was talking about names and how what you *call* something does not change what it *is* -- except that I don't think I would enjoy stopping to smell the skunks every morning nearly as much. Although, I suppose if I had always known them as "skunks" instead of "roses" I wouldn't know the difference would I . . .
LeAnn R. Ralph