It was the small jerky movements that drew my notice. A wren, threading its way through the dry stone wall, was delicately pincering insects from under moss and among lichens. It nipped in and out of gaps before suddenly reappearing. At times I could only spot movement through a slit between stones. Then it rested, legs splayed across two coping stones, and stayed there for a full five minutes while I delighted in its detail through the lens of binoculars. A pale eye-stripe, barred wing-feathers, beak flushed apricot, backlit by evening light. The wren blinked often, sometimes half closing its eyes, sun on its back, revelling in the warmth.
As it is our commonest bird, it’s not surprising that I’ve had several close encounters with wrens. Walking the fields last summer, I noticed activity in a tangled heap of hawthorn by the side of the footpath. A flurry of newly fledged wrens were exploring the world outside the nest as they moved through the interlaced branches. Ignoring the parent that was frenziedly calling from a nearby tree, one of the fledglings flew up and stood on my shoulder. I twisted my head to look at it, but could feel nothing through my shirt, weighing as they do no more than a pound coin.
The breeding season starts this month. Male wrens make several nests before the female chooses one in which to lay her eggs. Tucked away in undergrowth or between rocks, they are camouflaged balls of moss, leaves and hay. She lines the selected nest with hair and feathers and lays five or six speckled white eggs.
They will also sometimes nest in very public places and perhaps this gives them some protection from predators. When I ran a walled herb garden, a flower basket was fixed to the wall by the shop door, its filling of compost and moss perfect material for a nest. Timed carefully, the wrens would nip in and out, feeding their chicks, unseen by visitors. No one noticed either when a sparrowhawk swept in to snatch a fledgling from right by my foot. The strategy, if it had been one, had failed on this occasion.
