Wren's Nest and Osprey-Cam

 When we got back from our trip to England, our son had taken care of the plants inside and outside.  As he was watering one of the hanging baskets of red impatients, he was surprised to see a small brown eye warily looking up at him.  It was a Carolina wren.  These birds will nest in some of the funniest places...sometimes, they will build a nest in a mailbox, a bag of nails, or in a hanging basket of flowers!  Instead of throwing away an old chair, I placed one hanging basket in the broken seat of the chair and the other one hanging off the back of the chair, and placed it outside our kitchen window. Therefore, this nest is just outside our window!  (Wren kitchen-cam)

  There, can you see the nest?  Of course not, it is perfectly camouflaged!  It is just in the middle of this pot just underneath the flowers.  Now, this is tricky...we have to water it just enough to keep this plant alive, but not so much that we want to make it too wet for the eggs!  It was really hot today, and when I came home from work, it was in a serious wilt so I had to water it...hopefully, the eggs will be okay.  I have read that the eggs are supposed to hatch in 14 days after they have been laid, so that must mean that it will be any day now...

 Richard took these photos of the Carolina wren before we went to England.   It is an incredibly sweet little bird, it has a squarish sort of tail that flicks up and down and eats insects as it quickly flits about in the garden. The song of this bird is so very loud for its size!  I remember reading somewhere (and this might not be true but it should be) that the native American name for it meant "little bird with a big voice"...

Richard and I love our birds and we like to support the Audubon Society.  We received an email from them telling us that that they have a web-cam set up on an osprey nest at Hog Island, Maine.  We have spent some time this afternoon watching the osprey feeding fish to their nestlings!  If you would like to see this, go to their website at www.audubon.org   and once you are there, you should see where to click on for the live osprey-cam.   It says that the best viewing is from 7AM-8PM Eastern standard time for the USA.   We saw an osprey at Arabia Lake earlier this year and were amazed by the size of this bird and the large wingspan which was obvious even from a good distance away.  From this live web-cam you can really see how big the wings and beak and claws really are...and you can see this also on the baby ospreys!  Please let me know if you are able to see these magnificent creatures and what you think about them. 

Hopefully, we will have baby wrens soon...I will let you know!