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House Wren Eviction

House Wren Eviction
Illustration by Adelaide Tyrol

One afternoon in early June, a small brown bird swooped down in front of our kitchen window. I wondered where it had swooped from when, a minute later, I saw it fly back up, with a sliver of straw in its beak. I went out the back door, onto the deck, in time to see the bird exiting the shower vent on the gable end of the house. It was a house wren, and it was building a nest in my house.

Tip to tail, house wrens, Troglodytes aedon, are generally about 5 inches long and weigh about .4 oz. – half the length of the average robin and far lighter. They have brown feathers, longish beaks, and tails that are often tipped upwards. These tiny birds have one of the most expansive breeding ranges of any songbird, stretching from southern areas of Canada, to the far southern reaches of South America. In between they are found across the entire continental United States, the West Indies, Mexico, and Central America.

As a bird lover, I was delighted at the idea of having a family of house wrens just outside the backdoor. My delight was tempered, however, by the fact that my partner Rick and I had spent the past month avoiding the front door, as a pair of robins had built a nest on our front porch. Once all the nestlings fledged, we again felt free to enter and exit our house using either door. At least until the following afternoon, when the house wren showed up.

As cavity-nesting birds, house wrens are often drawn to buildings, with crevices and crannies that suit their nesting needs. The shower vent was ideal, except that it wasn’t designed to stay open. The bottom two flaps happened to be stuck when the wren decide it was a good place to raise a family. Not only were we not interested in restricting our access to the deck or back door, but we worried the bird would find itself unable to get to the nest if the vent suddenly closed.

Still, I didn’t like the idea of interfering with the bird’s efforts. I was already feeling a touch guilty that we’d moved the now-empty robin’s nest to a nearby apple tree, because we didn’t want the pair raising a second brood on the porch, where Rick had some carpentry work to do.  My reluctance faded, however, when I learned that the wren was most likely a male constructing a dummy nest – a sort of prototype used to court a potential mate. A single male can construct as many as a dozen, though “construct” may be too an ambitious a word.

“This is not so much to start the nest-building process as it is to psychologically ‘claim’ the space,” explains Scott Johnson, professor of biology at Towson University in Maryland. “When a female arrives on the territory, he often will direct her to one or more of these potential nest cavities by flying between her and the cavities.”

The male will claim the space with nothing more than a few twigs and a bit of white cottony material. When a female chooses one of the offered sites, it is not unusual for the building process to start almost from scratch. “She sometimes will throw out some of the male’s sticks, because they're just too big and hard to work with. Females wisely use smaller, more manageable sticks that can be shaped into a cup,” said Scott.

We decided to check out what was underway in the vent. Rick climbed a ladder and found exactly what Scott described: several twigs and a ball of fuzz. He tossed it into the yard and closed the vent. The wren returned a couple of times that afternoon, but then gave up.

This foreclosure was probably a good thing, because, unlike our resident robins that left the nest at the sight of us, wrens can be tiny terrors when defending their territory. “They will attack nest predators such as chipmunks, weasels and the like, by flying at them, sometimes striking them with their feet. About one in 50 adult males will similarly strike a human in the back of the head when you are looking in their nest box,” said Johnson.

Not only will house wrens attack predators and the occasional human, but the males sometimes destroy the eggs of other birds. “As far as we can tell, this is typically done by unmated males and males whose mate has not yet laid her own eggs,” said Johnson. Once the pair has a clutch to tend, the behavior stops. The usual victims are other cavity-nesting birds that are taking up coveted nesting space. But sometimes male house wrens will attack the eggs of open-nesting species, such as cardinals and robins. “We have no idea why this is done,” said Johnson.

Though they didn’t have the opportunity to take up residence in the vent, a pair of house wrens did settle nearby. We see them flitting around the garden and around the thickets at the edge of the yard. As for the robins, they ignored their displaced nest and built a new one in the exact same spot as the first. Their second clutch had three eggs, and neither we nor the male wren disturbed them.

Discussion *

Jun 25, 2022

The house wrens in my area are horrible. They threw out the cardinal eggs and and Carolina wren eggs and the chickadee babies. I no longer allow them to nest in my yard because they kill everything!

Missy
Jun 24, 2020

Yesterday my video camera captured a house wren (possibly another female) stealing the 4 hatchlings! The parents kept flying back in the bird box to feed the missing babies. Is this a territorial dispute?

Brian
May 18, 2020

Enjoyed your article on Wrens! They have been so nasty to the other birds that nest in my yard that I don’t let wrens use my boxes anymore I tried the throwing all the sticks out of the boxes but it really doesn’t work because then they have entered other boxes and killed the babies they are very nasty to chickadee’s so I put wren guards on all their boxes and place them away from bushes and it has helped.

Mic
May 07, 2020

Karen,
At night, female house wrens almost always settle in their nests to incubate eggs or brood young.  During daylight hours, they will leave the nest frequently between incubation and brooding bouts. If your door is closed at dawn, it’s likely to disrupt her morning activity and could lead to nest abandonment. Still, it’s difficult to assess the risk - your wren might adjust. Have you considered installing an automatic door? Barn swallows have been known to operate these in order to move freely to and from indoor nests - by fluttering in front of the sensor!

Dan
May 07, 2020

Wrens are building a nest in my sun room.  We leave the door open during the day to let our Golden Retriever out in our back yard.  Will be able to close the door at night after the wren lays her eggs, or are we committed to leaving our sun room door open 24/7 if we let them complete their nest?

Karen Mahnke
Jul 18, 2019

The best thing about wrens is their sing….I love it

Barbara
Jul 07, 2019

I have a nest with fledgling on my patio just above the area where we sit
Needless to say they are the new residents to enjoy our sitting area!

Tip
Apr 26, 2019

I had a wren nest inside a silk flower arrangement at my backdoor. Yesterday we had a storm come through and a burst of wind blew the arrangement off the shelf it was on. To my horror, some of the eggs spilled out. Using gloves, I placed the eggs back in the nest and replaced the arrangement back on the shelf. This morning, I see that the nest is completely cleaned out. What happened to the eggs?

Sandra
Feb 25, 2019

I enjoy all kinds of birds.I had several different kinds. I love watching them while eating breakfast. But when the Wrens came they chased away all my other birds. They are not nice birds at all. I want my others back. Any ideas? Thank you

Judy
Aug 08, 2018

I’m glad you enjoyed the article, Ethan and Susan. And I agree that house wrens are a pleasure to watch and hear, despite their sometimes-surly behavior.

Carolyn
Aug 03, 2018

I have wrens in my yard and the male had started nests in 4-5 boxes before the couple decided on one near my back patio.  They have chased out a chickadee family that started there first, which is sad too, but they are so fun to watch. On the rainy evening all 6 babies fledged was just so cute, they were hiding from the rain under our BBQ grill cover; it was adorable.  Wrens can be very aggressive, but they are so active and I enjoy watching how hard they work.

Carol Blaser
Jul 30, 2018

Enjoyed your article Carolyn.  I’ve persuaded house wrens to choose one of the other dummy nests too.  One year they nested in a front yard box on a suburban neighborhood road.  Not only are they clever, territorial and darn industrious but they are also operatic musical and loud.  I had neighbors commenting on how loud…needless to say, those dummy nests get removed each year too.

Susan
Jul 30, 2018

Nice story!

I learned that the “white cottony material” is likely spider egg cases.

Ethan

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