House Wren

I am mixed, too, because of their bad bird habits. But yet I enjoy their song and their bouncy ways.

We rarely see these birds all summer, but sometimes early in the breeding season and most often late July through August. This is the first year we've seen any of their destruction. We found a pierced Mourning Dove egg.

This is our first year to have a nesting box up, but the only interested party was a pair of Tree Swallows and even then, they moved on after checking it out. It is between our driveway and pasture, and there's no real close by trees.

Last year a male made a dummy nest in an old Barn Swallow nest above our front door.

Mixed feelings- although I enjoyed watching the nest building and rearing of the young, these birds are very protective and territorial. I had a thistle seed feeder in the yard and they would not let any bird near it (despite the fact they have no interest in the seed). One amusing side note- they didn't tolerate the chipmonks either- I watched a couple of the chipmonks get "wing-punched" and pecked by both wren parents- they couldn't run away fast enough.
If you like the wrens, that's great, but understand that during the nesting season, they may be the only bird you see in your yard. They were fun to watch, but I don't think I'll encourage them next year. I missed seeing the goldfinches at the thistle seed feeder.

I put up bird houses this year and adopted a wren I nicknamed Lonesome George pretty quickly. He quickly went about building false nests in all of them and called loudly for several weeks until a female appeared. At first I found him to be a pest, trying to take over all the birdhouses, but after some house sparrows occupied one of them, I appreciated George the wren, who persistantly kept tearing the sparrows nest up, making life very hard for them. I had wanted bluebirds, but I'm glad they never appeared because George probably would have killed their babies like the sparrows. The wrens left in early August with their babies, but I look forward to him coming back next year. I hope he does.
They didn't bother my finches at all.