Airborne

A few weeks ago I showed you the Northern House Wrens building their nest in an old gourd. After a summer storm, the gourd collapsed at a 45 degree angle, but the wren family was undeterred:

At first I thought there was only one chick:

But there were actually three, and by the time of these photos they could barely all fit into the mouth of the nest:

The parents were coming and going with food supplies. A grasshopper:

Next, a grub, delivered from below this time:

A large beetle for the lucky lefthand one, leaving the other one bereft:

My husband, and the solicitous father of our children, worried about the unfed chick: one can only hope that somehow they take turns.

It seemed to me that the chicks must venture out any day now, and sure enough the next morning one was sitting on a twig overhanging the nest:

Two were still inside, and the indefatigable parents continued to bring food:

They also removed endless numbers of fecal sacs; this short video shows a food delivery, followed by a cleanup:

At one point the pioneering fledgling chick returned to the gourd and tucked itself in under an overhang:

then flew competently off:

I thought if I watched for long enough perhaps I would see one of the last two taking its very first flight, so I settled in. Here is the resulting video. It starts with the one that had emerged the night before. Then all three chicks keep up a non-stop chatter, as they try to work out where the oldest one has gone. The climactic next section has been slowed down: the righthand chick almost falls out of the nest, flutters to get a grip on the lower rim, hangs there for a moment and then flaps up to clamber onto the top of the gourd. It surveys this new world, then takes its first real very short flight (more of a hop) to the next twig up. Success.

The final chick left a little while later. They stay nearby, and the parents will continue to feed them for a while until they are truly independent. Twenty-four hours and a rain squall later, they were calling for food from a tree about 200 yards away. It’s a cold hard world out there:

House wrens sometimes have more than one brood: we live in hope.