These little Jenny wren (house wrens) come to my bird house every spring. They sing all day long about how happy they are to be here raising their little family. They are peaceful little birds who are never aggressive to other birds. 

I tend to look out my back door a lot, enjoying my flowers and hearing these birds and also some cat birds singing their songs. One morning I looked out and saw unusual things happening. One male English sparrow and two females were terrorizing my two little wrens. The male was obviously the instigator but all 3 were standing guard on the wren house, flying around it and sitting on top of it. They would take turns sitting at the hole in the house and putting their heads inside, and flying at the wrens when they tried to come near.

(Jenny wrens will only live in houses that meet their requirements. The wren house has to be of a small size, the hole can be no bigger than a nickel, and there can not be a perch, which would make it easier for a bird to hang on the box and put their head in. Any bigger bird would only be able to put their head in. English sparrows are maybe 4x the size of these wrens.)

I went out and chased  the sparrows away several times but they came right back. I could hear the baby wrens chirping in the box. Once I went to chase sparrows away, one baby bird was laying on the ground under the box, and I put it back in. I thought my heart would break for these little birds.

Over the next 4 hours I watched for the sparrows to go away and/or the wren parents to come back. I went up there 3 other times and found  a baby on the ground and returned it to the house. The sparrows kept coming back and the wrens didn’t. I could hear one wren singing up in the trees near my house. I read that wrens will abandon their babies only in extreme stress, like if they are afraid for their own lives.

The parents were not going to be allowed to come back. The sparrows kept up their vigilance. It made no sense, like if they wanted the house for themselves, since they can’t even get into this house. It was going to be evening and then night after a while, and these birds hadn’t been fed now for hours. They were going to starve.  Or lay on the ground and be eaten by another animal and other things I didn’t even want to consider. Right or wrong,  I had to open the house and remove the babies. 

I brought the house on to the porch.  I found a small cardboard box and put holes in it, lined it with paper towels. I have a friend who has raised baby birds and fed them scrambled eggs and as they get bigger, mealworms. So I scrambled an egg and broke it into small pieces, and got my tweezers. 

It was time to open the house and find out how many there were and how big. They were adorable, and healthy looking, all 6 of them. 

I took them out and put part of their very well built nest in the cardboard box and put them in there. They were about the size of a quarter and had some pinfeathers in their wings. Several had their eyes  open and the rest still closed. 

Well, these birds are telling me very definitely that they are hungry, and the scrambled egg is cooled now, so let’s figure out how to get baby birds to eat!

I could tell that these birds were big enough to eat pieces of food, not a liquid or gruel served from a syringe. I had seen their parents taking bugs in to feed them. Small pieces of egg at first with the tweezers went in to little open  mouths very easily. 4 of them stood on top of 2 and I keep taking the 2 out from under, and made sure all 6 got some of the egg. After I could see that the small pieces were eaten easily, I increased the size of the pieces  a little.  After a while, they stopped asking for more, and settled down and went to sleep.

And I left to go to a store where I could get small mealworms. When I got back, within 15 minutes there was chirping coming from the box.   I learned to cut the mealworms in 3 pieces and serve them with a toothpick.  They ate a few of them and settled down again. Knowing there is more protein in mealworms than eggs, I hoped they would be satisfied and sleep thru the night. Their parents don’t feed them after dark, but they were hungry, from not eating part of the day.  I hoped to go downstairs in the morning and find 6 live and hungry birds.  

Part way down the steps in the morning, about 6:30, I heard chirping. 6 lively and hungry birds, yesss. I fed them a lot of mealworms.  Then they settled down again, satisfied.  That gave me time  to eat some breakfast and drink my coffee. And put the wren house back up where it was. All day about every 90 minutes, the chirping started up again and I fed them again. And the parents didn’t come back, nor did the sparrows. 

All morning I was busy calling around to try to find a wildlife rehabber who would take them.  I could feed them and keep them safe but the parents teach them things once they fledge, like how to find food. I couldn’t do that. I had to find somebody to help. 

And I did!  I exhausted the idea of one near me, because there is only one and they were full to capacity with new baby birds. But then, Red Creek Wildlife Center https://redcreekwildlifecenter.com/ said they would take them and raise them if I could get them to where they are, 90 minutes away.  Luckily I had found another organization called Wildlife in Need PA, https://winemergencyresponse.com/who does relay transportation of wildlife across Pennsylvania to wildlife rescues. 

So at 5PM, a very nice volunteer from that organization came to pick up my little box with 6 beautiful lives inside. I fed them right before they left, and she enjoyed seeing them and how cute and healthy they were. Then she and the birds drove away. 

The next morning, the adult wrens were back at their house, singing and cleaning the house out. And no sparrows. Then the Director from Wildlife in Need called to say he had kept the birds at his house overnight and they were happy and healthy this morning. Then he took them to Red Creek Wildlife Center. 

The 3 people I talked to from these two organization all agreed with me that none of us had ever seen sparrows act like this. We had no explanation.  It’s not that the sparrows wanted the box for themselves, since they can’t even get in there. This was brutal and so sad. 

Now it’s a few days later and the wrens are singing and have built a new nest in their house. They often have 2 clutches a summer, and they’re working on the 2nd one now.

The baby birds will be treated well and have a chance at life. The parents are going on reproducing their species  the way wild life does. And I had the privilege of taking care of beautiful little baby wrens for one day. I am so thankful for both of the wildlife organizations I found, for their help in saving these birds and all the things they both do for wildlife.

I just wish I could tell the parents that their babies are not dead; killed by sparrows or starved. But I know. 

7/7/24: an update. After this horrible experience above, the pair of wrens stayed here and started a 2nd clutch. 🙂 It was odd the way they moved around in the yard, silently……none of the bright beautiful wren songs proclaiming that this was their territory. They remembered how they had been brutalized before, forced to leave their house and then their babies disappeared.

I held my breath so many time when I saw any sparrow on the clothes lines or poles where the wren house hangs. 😬 In a while both birds started the feeding frenzy of flying in and out with bugs in their mouth, and out with bird poop. All silently, which was so strange.

Today, I know that that clutch of babies has fledged. 😍 I know that because observation of wrens for many years has taught me what to look for and see. There are 2 places of dense growth near the ground in my back yard, near the wren house: big rose bushes and the chicory raised bed. Today, every time I go near one of those places, adult wrens give me those adorable little wren growls/warnings/alarm sounds. Baby birds are on the ground in there and the adults are teaching them what they need to know. Soon they will be on their own. Good luck, tiny birds.

Then the adult wrens and the babies will fly away, starting their long trip to the warm places where they spend the winter. I hope that some of these wrens will return to my wren house next year, hopefully singing those beautiful songs all around the yard, having forgotten the bad experience some had here earlier this year.