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Mama and Daddy Wren have been perching on this sign for 5 weeks now. They finally trust me with a camera, but not too close, please.






Monday morning: The porch is quiet for a change. There are no frantic parents flying around, hustling bugs, jumping in and out of the bucket, watching for people, dogs and the neighbors cat. The Wren family is gone.

For weeks, three to four, I've been watching my little wrens. The wren famliy have been checking out the real estate here on the porch ever since we moved in almost 3 years ago. I was so excited the first time I saw them hopping around on the porch, sticking their little beaks into pots and planters, flitting around like the picky real estate clients they are.Eventually they'd turn me down. I'd hear them off in the distance in the neighborhood singing their songs to each other, knowing there were baby birds being born that I'd never even get to see. hummmmpf!
I pouted, but it did absolutely no good. I also bought two wren houses and put them on the porch. Now that's real wren real estate– a house that's paid for and just made for a growing family–but they'd have none of it.They'd show up a couple of times during the spring and summer, poke their heads in and out of prospective nesting places then turn their sharp noses in the air and off they'd go to greener pastuers.







Prescott Porch Wrens: I walked out Saturday afternoon and heard the noise. This was the baby's first flight, just fresh out of the nest. She was clinging to the screen door unbeknownst to me when I opened it. In a flutter of terror she flew back up to the top of the porch to her bucket/nest. Can you see that look on her face? The one that says, "Lady, I'm in no mood for pictures."






Last spring, I noticed them again. They were jumping in and out of a painted tin flower bucket I've had for years. For two or three mornings in a row I noticed the wrens around the bucket and then as suddenly as they'd come; they'd gone.
I decided to put that bucket up on a ledge near the porch ceiling last fall hoping that this spring when they came back by, the bucket would be in just the right place for them. You see, I have a predilection for wrens and their ways, and a long history of friendship with the species.

Many years ago in a far away time and place, I lived in the country with a husband who is not this one, and four small children.
Behind our simple house in the country was a pump house with a lean-to, that I had somehow convinced then husband to have wired for electricity and closed in. I'd drawn a sketch of what I wanted while sitting at the kitchen table one night. I yearned for this place the way I've yearned for few things in my life. It was to be mine; my space; my room; my garden house. I'd never really had a space that belonged exclusively to me. I suppose few of us do in our lives, but it was to be my studio where I would read books I'd always wanted to read and where I'd begin to write the way I'd always hoped that I would write.

My sister had an old couch and some bookshelves stored away in her mother-in-law's barn, and one brave afternoon a gang of us went out to the barn in her husband's truck and loaded the stored items on to the truck and brought them way out to the other side of the county to my house. It was a momentous occasion as if all of us involved realized its importance. It signaled a shift, a turn in direction in my life. My children were growing up, preparing to fly, and I was beginning a new phase of life. This was the starting point.

That afternoon, after all the major moving was done, I combed the attic and the closets and bedrooms of the old house for any piece of furniture that might be available. I foraged, rambling through looking for a table or desk and a spare lamp. Back in those days the pickins' were slim indeed, but by bedtime, the children and I were out in the garden room listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter in the dim glow of the contraband lamp, sweeping the concrete floor, placing books on the shelves, hanging old pictures, posters and one old quilt that covered an entire wall. This room was to be my sanctuary for the next few years; my garden room, my literary salon where my invited guests would include : Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe(Look Homeward Angel), Washington Irving, Pearl Buck, Frank O'Connor, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Alice Munroe, Edna St. Vincent Millay and others. I read more in that year than in any year of my life. I was unknowlingly being prepared for the hell that was ahead as I spent luxurious hours alone in the garden shed, alone with my books and my typewriter. Solitude. After more than ten years of being pregnant, having babies, raising babies, teaching babies, cooking and cleaning and never being alone, I now had stretches of time to read, to think, to be.
There were two huge lessons I learned in that year.

The biggest lesson was this: I am not alone. I've always felt out of place on this planet. Maybe we all do. But when I read Flannery O'Connor's And the Violent Shall Bear It AwayI went into a spooky kind of shock for days. It was as if she'd gone into the deepest parts of my soul and found the parts that I'd wanted to keep hidden and put them all out on paper and turned it into a book! This was a great relief to me, a relief I suspect I'm not alone in experiencing.

The second biggest lesson I learned was this: If you're alone in a room and you hear scratching and shuffling of paper, it doesn't necessarily mean you've got:



a roaches
b.mice or rats
c. a burglar



I immediately began regular treks to my garden house. It was a time like no other in my life. I was experiencing mornings in the country. I have no way to understand it of explain it other than to remember how much I loved living in the country. I created a little island that existed for some years there on our small farm. For nearly a decade I taught the children at home. I was mystical in those days, my imagination was powerful and energetic with brushstrokes of this or that I put us in another century of literature, gardening, animals and love of land. When the money dried up and we discovered we were broke I had to put the children into real school while Then husband went back to school.

On any day I wasn’t working at my job weighing trucks at a near by gravel pit, I’d be spending luxurious hours in my cool airy room, suspending the reality of time, listening to the crickets and katydids of summer, roosters crowing, occasional cows in the field, these noises, these distant noises were the only sounds of my day.
One silvery blue morning, I was sitting at the little table reading occasionally peering out the one small window at the dreamy hay field and watching the red winged black birds working the wheat when I was startled by a sudden sound, a scratching at the door. I turned quickly turned see what or who was with me in the room, but alas, I saw nothing. I was so alone, I felt just a bit uneasy. I rose, went to the door and opened it. I stepped out onto the little shed’s porch looked in every direction then shrugged to myself thinking it must have been my imagination.








It was a couple of days before I got to my garden room again, again sitting at the desk reading when I heard the noise again, this time the scratching sound seemed closer as though someone was shuffling through papers very close to my ears. I turned around quickly and again, nothing.

I decided the next day not to sit at the desk, but to stretch out on the couch to read so maybe I might find the source of the scratching, shuffling noise. I read for only a few minutes when I heard the noise again; someone was rustling paper, but I remained still and waited and waited.
When I heard a noise that was so slight that it was more a sense than an actual noise, as if someone was staring at me.

My eyes moved slowly around the room as far as my vision would allow when I caught the quick, sudden movement in the corner of my eyes¬–a tiny shadow lurked beneath a small open space at the corner of the old wooden door. Then flutterflutterflutter pop!

There she was perched proudly and fearlessly before me on my bookshelf with a piece of straw from the wheat field dangling from her lips, ahem, excuse me, her tiny golden brown beak. I remained motionless whereby she turned, hopped up a shelf or two and proceeded to tuck the piece of hay neatly into the rim of her nest to be.
Over the next few days she and her husband worked tirelessly building the nest. At first I was very careful not to frighten them by sudden movements or by walking or standing when I knew they were in the room, but one morning when I arrived to begin my reading day I carefully opened the door and walked past the book shelf a confluence of motion shot past my ear with a whizzing. Startling me, I offered a scream but quickly realized no scream was necessary. I stood, turning my head slightly when I beheld the gift, a perfectly round, straw nest right between Ernest Hemingway and Edgar Lee Masters with a single spotted egg in it’s center. Now instead of hustle and bustle, in and out, Mama wren was a resident and I needed to learn some manners.
It took almost 2 weeks for her to finish laying, and during that time we regarded each other with respect and trust. She never flew away again when I passed the nest, but I didn’t press it. I let her have her privacy. If I entered the room I’d check first to see if she was setting, if she was on the nest I’d walk right by, not stopping to lean in close to take a peek at her, then go on with my business. If she wasn’t on the nest I’d stick my head over into the back of the bookshelf to see how many eggs had been laid. By the time she was finished there were 5 little eggs.
I’d read a little about the nesting habits of wrens. I knew that she would set and her mate would be close by waiting, calling, singing, declaring his territory until the day they left the nest together as a family. He’d play and active and equal role in working tirelessly hunting for worms, grubs, bugs of any kind to take to the nest and feed his offspring. I knew that everything would be neat and tidy. The parents have a system to keep the nest clean. They wrap all baby waste in a yucky yuck bag and carry it away from the nest to dump it. It’s quite sanitary and just amazing to watch.
The nest building and egg laying all took place in April and a beautiful April it was. On my birthday, April 23rd I’d gotten the children off to school. I didn’t have to work so I went straight out to my garden room.
I walked by the nest, grabbed the book I was reading and sat at the table near the window with my hot cup of coffee. The hay field was dense and blue as the wheat shimmered in the early morning mist; I was drifting in reverie when I heard little Mama Wren coming in under the door, but when she hopped up to her nest there was no longer the silence of eggs. I heard music; it was tweeting! Little baby bird tweeting! On my birthday!!!
Over the next 2 weeks I couldn’t wait to get out to my garden shed, and on the days I worked, I went out to check on the happy family before I left in the mornings and when I came home in the late afternoons. In the second week in May an old friend of mine was coming out to have a cup of coffee with me. I’d told her about my wren family and she wanted to see them. I met her in the driveway and we walked quietly out to the garden shed, opened the door and I showed her how to catch a peek of the babies. Conveniently Mama and Daddy were out searching for bugs.
The fat babies bulged over the sides of the nest as if one more worm or beetle for breakfast would send them plunging over the edge and into the abyss. We laughed and commiserated with the bulging babies, being reminded of our most recent image of ourselves squeezing into those jeans we’d juuuuuuust out grown
We had our coffee and talked.I noticed, though, that the parents were unusually loud, attentive, almost fretful. Peggy left and I went back to my reading on the couch right across from the bookshelf/wren-estate. I’d just gotten in to my Farewell to Arms when I saw the parents enter the room hopping from pillar to post making loud fretful trills. They call it “teakettle!teakettle!” but there’s no way to describe a bird’s song in words. The wrens were “givin’ it fits” as my Mama used to say. At first, I was afraid they’d been nervous about Peggy and were just making sure the babies were ok. Then I wondered if maybe they’d seen a cat or a snake because these calls seemed urgent. Something was going on.
I stayed still, watching when I felt air moving; then a fluttering sound right by my left ear. I made an ever so slight turn of my head to discover to my joyful eyes the most adorable plump baby wren nonchalantly perched on the back of my chair staring right into my moon-eyed face. I sensed that as long as I was motionless she’d think I was a piece of furniture, which, at times, I’d almost agree with her. Then it dawned on me. This was––––––––––

SHOWTIME!!!!!


I had nothing in the world to do that day other than sit and watch my babies learn to fly, and learn to fly they did. The parents worked tirelessly calling each baby out of the nest. The little feathered butter-balls would test gravity by lopping forward, trustingly, obediently free-falling out into space.
Gravity worked every time, and their tiny little bodies plunged toward the ground and their wings popped out at their sides fluttering frantically. Like miniature parachutists they fell softly mysteriously hoisting their tiny bodies toward something, anything to land on that wasn’t the floor.
The garden room was the perfect place for wren launching. There were lamps, shelves, a couch, a chair, a desk, a bookshelf, all kinds of different heights for them to clutch with their little baby wren feet and all of it safe. No cats.
The five baby wrens spread out all over the room, tweeting, chirping, flapping, jumping from place to place, getting comfortable with their new wings. After the children got home from school we all went out to the shed and peeked through the window watching the entertainment.


This picture had to be take from a distance. I enlarged it and adjusted it. I was not about to interfere and scare this brand new flyer.






The flight test went on until late in the day when Mama and Daddy began to call the them back to the nest. I knew they’d be gone soon. I put a little block in the window and covered the open part with plywood leaving just enough room for the birds to get in and out, but too small for a cat.
I went out right at dark and told the family good night. The babies were bulging from the nest, the parents were out in the night, roosting and waiting for daybreak.
And daybreak it must have been. Early the next morning the children and I went out to the shed before they caught the bus. They were gone. All gone. There wasn’t a trace of them except for the carefully woven nest next to Ernest and Edgar Lee.
I was sad. They were gone and with them they took a part of my life that was passing all too quickly.


But here on Prescott Street I’d been anxious for days watching the parents. Blue and Gertie are on the porch a lot with me. I knew how delectable a tender little wren would taste to my bird dog, so I really had to be careful not to let Blue out on the porch on the day the birds were learning to fly.
It wasn’t hard at all. They prepared me several days ahead of time with their cries of impending bird departure. As my son Sam would say, “This ain’t my first rodeo.” I knew what to expect.
Saturday morning, I left the house early to work down at Calvary Church pulling some weeds and mulching. When I got home SHOWTIME had begun. I took as many pictures as I could. I read in my office which is right off the porch so I could watch, and so that I could look out for cats that roam the neighborhood. I think there were only two babies. They were both out of the nest at the same time when I heard some unusually stressful cries from the parents.
I dashed out front and a slick black stray cat was slinking right under the porch ledge.
“GIT!!!” I ran her off with a broom in my hand and thankfully, that was that.






This baby is resting on the lamp shade. Her parents are talking to her from the birch tree branches. Sounds like comforting and encouraging the way I used to do when my kids were learning to swim. "Ok, now, you're not going to go under, just lie flat in the water, hold your breath and float, here, you can do it, just relax and float, float, float." something like that except relax, you can do it, fly, fly, fly....











We went to a dinner party at 6 o’clock. By that time the babies were all ready safely tucked into bed.
I woke up at 8 on Sundat morning. I grabbed my coffee and came out to see how things were going. Before I got to the door I noticed the silence. No wren noises, no parental chiding, encouraging, warnings, teachings. They were gone. It was just as it had been before. No,"Well, thanks for the great time we had on your porch. Hope we see you next spring!" No warning, no good bye, just silence.
Later that afternoon I was working in my backyard and I heard wren noises.
I followed my ears and spotted them in the neighbor’s back yard in a dense thicket of bridal wreath spirea. It was dark and well protected, a part of the yard no one uses. Those smart birds. Through the branches I listened to the trills, I could see the shadowy outline of the unmistakable profile of a baby wren, perched on a branch, beak confidently in the air, tail erect and in constant flittering motion. I said, “Good bye my babies, be careful out there in this cat ridden world. Watch your back and please, don’t forget, the housing prices here in Memphis are really cheap. Especially on one certain porch on Prescott.”








The empty nest is left neat as a pen. I see leaves from the front yard, Blue's dog hair that I've brushed and left in the yard just so the birds could use it and familiar looking sticks, it's like a quilt in a way. I'll clean it out and wash things off and wait for them to return.