Nest Building Wren

Mr Wren

Good Friday saw me venture out into what remained of the sunshine, across London, and into Richmond Park. The wonderful thing that brings me back to the park, is that you never know just what you’ll see. There are the trees, woodland, countless birds, and of course the deer. But you never know what situations the animals might be in, or behaviour you might see. And, time of day, time of year, different weather, etc, can lead to different things to see. With Spring upon us, I notice many of the birds are nest building.

Whilst walking along my favourite path of the park, looking for parakeets in holes in trees, I spotted a small brown flurry of feathers hop along the ground and into a fallen tree, a few meters away. No bigger than a mouse, a little bird emerged, perched on a fallen tree limb. It was a little wren. Quickly as it had arrived, it flew off into the undergrowth. I watched and waited and some time later it returned, with small bits of fluff in it’s beak. It was building a nest.

The interesting thing about wrens is that the male builds not just one nest, but several, anything up to 6 or 7. The wren then sings and attracts a female who browses the selection, chooses one, and only then is it lined. And as the male has more than one nest, he can have more than one female too ! Also, weight for weight, a wren is 10 times louder than a cockerel !

I watched the nest building from a far enough distance to not frighten, or disturb the wren. Mr Wren didn’t seem at all bothered, so over the space of what must have been about an hour, I slowly edged forward a few meters, all the while not wanting to disturb him. He carried on building, and singing. If he had showed any signs of distress I would have left him well alone, but all seemed well. Here he is sings away :

Now, a wren is very small, as I say, only about the size of mouse, and as I didn’t want to disturb him I couldn’t get too close. This meant I had to use my longest zoom lens, the Nikon 80-400mm lens. It’s an older lens now. It’s slow to focus, the glass is slow ( meaning it doesn’t let as much light through as “faster” lens ). It’s also quite soft and has to be stopped down to f8 in order to be anywhere near sharp, resulting in a slow lens gets slower ! Under darker conditions it makes the lens a real struggle to use. But it’s also quite expensive, and to replace it with something better would cost a fair amount, perhaps £4000+, something that I simply cannot afford to do. However, I know I the limitations of the lens, and rather than let it frustrate me, I know I must instead accept it as it is. The photo’s here capture the moments for me, they might not be pro-quality, but they make me smile. Photography should always be fun, and not frustrating.

Back to the wren. He was very hard to see and I only saw him fly into the hole in his log, due to the movement. Can you see him in this photo ?

Here he is again, a little easier to see. It has what appears to be an insect in it’s beak as it emerges from the hole :

As the sky became thicker with cloud, and the light faded, I left Mr Wren to continue his construction alone. Watching him hop around, collecting nest building materials, perch on a a stump and sing – it all made my day. I wish him the best of luck with his family !