Great Expectations

Last Sunday there was a lot of excitement as we were confident that a pair of wrens were using our blue tit box for their nest. All day we watched as the pair flew in and out with moss and grass thatch to line the nest. See here.

There was a great deal of frustration the next day when we discovered a cat sitting on top of the nest box with the two wrens close-by on the clothes line twittering at the cat. The cat was shooed away but the wrens, after flying round and round the nest box for several minutes, eventually flew away.

It was then that we discovered that both our cat repelling devices had stopped working. Our frustration was taken out on Amazon for selling us devices that failed within the warranty period. All credit to Amazon though, they sent replacements by first class post.

There was no sign of the wrens the next day and we had abandoned hope of them returning.

But just in case we set up an elaborate defence system for the nest box. The outer 'picket-line' defences consisted of a dummy nest box sited in a cat-attractive position and a Mark 1 hose-pipe to look like a snake. We then had a medium range defence consisting of an STV610 infra-red radar with automatic ultra-sonic 'missiles'. Close in to the nest we had a further STV610 infra-red radar defence system. As back-up we also had Mark 1M and Mark 1F long-range 'missiles' that could be launched at a moments notice from the kitchen observation post ~ these are fairly slow-moving with arm-waving and sub-sonic 'shooing'.

On Thursday one wren was spotted going into the nest box. We weren't sure if it was the female returning to use the nest or the male just using the box as a batchelor pad. A solitary wren was seen again on Friday and our hopes were raised that it was the female. The defence system was working perfectly and no cats were seen in the garden.

Then, joy-of-joys, today the wren has been seen constantly going back and forth fetching more moss and grass thatch and we are very confident that it is the female wren and that she has eggs.

We live in hope.