Well she has a shady little garden tucked in against the north side of that barn decorated with various things, including three of these decorative bird cages that she picked up for next to nothing at a resale shop and had me hang from one of the surrounding trees before populating them with another cheep find, some green metal cats.
Well I was back there trying to kill myself by digging a trench when I noticed, through the sweaty fog and floating eye-spots of over-exertion, that one of those cages was populated by more than those stylized metal garden-cats.
In some sort of twisted irony, some Carolina Wrens had built their nest in the bottom of the cage and right now it was filled to bursting with chicks that hadn't fledged yet.
The thing about Caroline Wrens is that they will build nests anywhere. Every year I have to shoo them out of the barn and once I caught one of the little buggers building a nest in a cubby in the open rear door of The Van.
So even though they had chosen the lowest of the three cages hanging in that tree, this wasn't such a bad place for a nest.
Except that disaster was looming.
These cages are not really built to hang out in the weather like that and I guess the added weight of the nest along with retained moisture from all the material the wrens had brought in was on the verge of being too much.
My quick fix was to wrap a couple lengths of para-cord around the cage to hold the floor up. Not pretty, but it was something I could do with the least amount of disturbance to the inhabitants and it only has to last until the occupants have fledged.
Para Cord ... great stuff
ReplyDeleteYep, always good to have some of the stuff around.
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