Life Around the Wren Nest

Dead Laptop Update: Apple has it as of this morning, and has ordered the part(s). Zick Update: Coping fine with Old Slow iMac and her ancient browsers. Keeps me off Facebook, and that's a good thing. I'm painting up a storm. Amazing what else you can get done when pages take minutes to load.

You may have gathered by now that I was rather single-minded about documenting wren family life. I loved it. It was exactly what my Science Chimpy brain loves to do, especially after two weeks of frenetic travel. Just to settle down and watch some birds--the same birds--doing what they do is my idea of heaven.

Watching any nest is really interesting, but there was so much else going on around this one that, while the parents were away foraging and the babies were sleeping, I took a few snapshots of other creatures on my front porch.

A silver-spotted skipper probes Geranium "Maverick Pink." I keep wanting to call it "Renegade Pink." I have a distinct aversion to the word "maverick."



A great spangled fritillary works on the Lobelia "Laguna Blue" in the wren basket.

A male ruby-throated hummingbird takes the morning sun on the wren basket bail.


And another feeds from a Little Beginner in the foreground. They like to catch the drips all around the cap.

Just so you can see where the nest was in relation to the front door, and to give you another mini-Chet Baker fix, here it is. It's the topmost, leftmost basket, the one with all the blue lobelia and pink gerania.

In case you're wondering, I don't pose Chet. He walks into whatever picture I'm trying to frame, and that's the truth. He walks in and looks right at the camera and tells me when he's ready for his closeup. How is this, Mether? I will stand by this pedestal and smile. I, Chet Baker, will transform your picture of plants from boring to charming.