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Wren's family roost |
22.09.2001 |
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Ó Michael Woods |
Alison Crouch of Woking
has been telling me how she watched a family of wrens going
to roost over a period of about two weeks in August. She
first heard a cheeping one evening around dusk and spied an
adult wren leading two or three fledglings. They flitted
around the garden and then disappeared into an abandoned
blackbird nest. This rather alarmed her because the nest was
so exposed to rain and cats but, three days later, the
family had moved to the greater safety of a birdbox.
While most common birds feed their young for a period after
they have left the nest and some may attempt to defend them
from predators, the wren is unusual because a parent,
usually the father, also leads the fledged brood into a
nursery roost. He calls and sings to the youngsters as he
moves from perch to perch and indicates the roost by hopping
in and out. The fledglings squeak to each other as they
follow and then fall silent as they settle down for the
night.
The nursery roost is most often selected from one of the
unused 'cock nests' that the male wren constructs as part of
his courtship routine, but the abandoned nests of other
birds and natural cavities are sometimes used. Occasionally,
the wrens move into a nest that is still occupied and there
is a record of a family that roosted under the sheltering
wings of a young cuckoo in a dunnock's nest. Luckily for the
wrens, the cuckoo no longer had the instinct to eject its
nest-mates.
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