The Resiliency of a Wren

By Karen Graham

I wonder what that mama wren was thinking, as she circled Shane high up in the oak, flitting from branch to branch with a cranefly in her beak waiting to drop it into her babies mouths. Shane’s whole body was wrapped around the trunk of the tree, his fingers groping inside the cavity where the wren’s precious babies were awaiting her return.

The wren’s bubbling alarm calls rang out around us. I imagine she was singing, “My babies! Leave! This is our home! Go away!” But despite her protests, Shane remained in the tree, uncomfortably close to her precious babies.

A couple weeks prior, Shane had pointed out the wrens nesting in the cavity while I was at Big Oak Canyon. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but I’ve become more interested in nesting behavior after recently joining the Southern California Bluebird Club as a bluebird monitor.

Big Oak Canyon is an oak forest with mature trees that provide natural habitat for wildlife, including cavity nesters like bluebirds and wrens. In my Irvine neighborhood and throughout much of Orange County, tree cavities are a rarity. Human development and the steady removal of dead and dying trees that provide cavities for nesting has been an existential threat to the survival of cavity nesters. The Southern California Bluebird Club builds, installs, maintains, and monitors nest boxes during nesting season to help rebuild this lost habitat when it’s most needed.

The following week, Jodi called and told me that the tree with the wrens’ nest was being cut down, and she and Shane wondered if I could bring one of my bluebird boxes over and help remove and transfer the nest to the box. The oak was so highly infested with the invasive gold-spotted oak borers (GSOB) that it was considered an “amplifier tree” – a tree with more than 100 exit holes, and the potential to amplify the population as they emerge as adults and go on to lay eggs.

Big Oak Canyon and its surrounding communities have been devastated by the discovery of this invasive pest. The GSOB likely landed in our corner of Southern California on firewood brought in one way or another from Arizona. A GSOB infestation can cause widespread oak tree mortality, driving severe impacts to wildlife habitat. An oak tree is considered a “keystone species,” a cornerstone of the ecosystem supporting biodiversity by providing food and shelter to hundreds of species. Cutting down an oak tree is a decision not to be taken lightly. In our effort to combat GSOB and its potential spread, several dead and dying oak trees are being removed from Big Oak. The oak tree with the nest needed to be removed or risk further infestation of the neighboring trees as the GSOB adults emerge and proliferate. But arborists will not remove a tree with an active nest as it is against federal law.

I told Shane and Jodi I would bring a spare bluebird nest box, pole and lifter to Big Oak Canyon. Our plan was to move the chicks to the box and then hang it on a nearby tree. We hoped that the parents would adapt to their new nest and the amplifier tree would be cut down on Sunday.

It was a stretch but that’s how I found myself looking up at Shane balancing on the branches with the wren flying around his head. He’d hung the bluebird box next to the cavity, but he couldn’t quite reach the babies. With each sweep of his fingers he pulled out more nesting material, but the nestlings were climbing up, out of reach inside of the tree cavity.

The nest was built stick by stick, assembled inside of the cavity, making it impossible to pull out of the small hole with the chicks inside. Shane directed me to the brickell bush growing nearby and I quickly snapped off several handfuls of dry branches. I bent and twisted them until I held a small nest woven out of sticks and sent it up to Shane in my lifter. He arranged the stick nest in the bluebird box.

Realizing he couldn’t get to the chicks, he climbed down to give mama wren a chance to feed her babies and we began to think of alternative solutions: a hori-hori carefully placed under the nest and lifted; kitchen tongs; a length of tule with gorilla tape wrapped around the tip, sticky side out; forked tongs made of a bent branch, Shane cleverly coined “Nestling Extractor.”

We kept trying, but nothing was working. After a couple hours Shane propped a ladder against the tree, secured it with rope, and up climbed Jodi towards the hole. Her hands were the smallest and her entire hand fit inside of the cavity.

She handed Shane the first chick. Then another, and another. He carefully transferred them to the nest in the box. The fourth chick was too high in the tree to reach. After many attempts, and with dinnertime approaching, Jodi and I each headed home to our waiting children.

Shane kept us updated via text…

5:11pm – Still one chick in the tree cavity. Chicks in the box are chirping loudly but mom is confused and is not going in the nest box

5:22pm – Mama flying from perch to perch with a crane fly looking for the sound.

5:34pm – Trying a risky temporary fix so she can see the box. (Hoping the chicks won’t fall out of the large opening).

5:47pm – Finally saw her perch at the box entrance, but didn’t feed the ones in the box

6:03pm – She went in! In with a caterpillar and out with a fecal sac!

6:13pm – In again with a crane fly

6:14pm – I’ll attempt to get the other one in the box and close the original door

6:47pm – Box is closed and she used the hole, but I still couldn’t reach the one in the tree

Saturday, May 18

8:26am – Trying one last time to get the last chick, everyone looks good

On the other side of the conversation were Jodi and my reactions. We were on the edge of our seats. Shane was able to remove the last chick with the Nestling Extractor, and the risky nest transfer was a success. Despite our intrusion the little wren family adapted, and raised four healthy chicks that all eventually fledged.

I am continuously in awe of the resiliency of nature. Despite life’s many inconveniences we throw their way, plants and animals persevere, recover, and adapt. Human actions disrupt their lives, again and again. We create obstacles for them. We destroy their habitat. We move their babies. And the birds and the trees forgive, and just keep trying to live alongside us.

It is our role as humans to care for our fellow living things that share this Earth with us as they have always cared for us, even through our neglect. I wonder now, about the time we spent with the wrens in that beautiful oak. Were we helping the birds that day, or were they helping us?

As we attempt to “fix” the GSOB infestation at Big Oak Canyon, there are no easy answers and no simple solutions. But that day, the success of moving the nest so the tree could be removed felt important. It pushed us forward, and stoked our hope. It’s the small accomplishments like this one that drive us to keep trying, continue to think of new solutions, and work together as we care for each other and the world. I imagine it is what the mama wren was thinking that day, as she was flying around Shane high up in the oak tree. This is my family. Even through this turmoil, I will stay and do what I can.