By Mary Reid Barrow

Photos by Mike Coughlin

A “long family-building exercise” has been taking place in Mike and Kat Coughlin’s Alanton yard this summer.

Mama and Papa wren have been busy with brood number two and Mike has taken to calling the bird’s house a “Wren Den.”

And this is not the first rodeo for the Coughlins. They have been sharing their yard with wrens most summers for more than a decade.

“The bird house has been hanging on the same branch of our Japanese cedar for 10+ years,” Mike wrote.

He said that wrens occupied the bird house most of those years, though chickadees beat them to the punch on occasion. The wren’s typical brood has been three to five birds, and the little ones grow up almost as part of the Coughlin family.

“The branch is mere feet from our porch,” Mike added, “within reach of my BBQ, so we can see the residents all day, sunrise to sunset.”

Though the wrens are used to their presence, they are like disagreeable in-laws at times fussing up a storm when the Coughlins are busy working around the yard.

And their youngsters do their share of fussing for other reasons. Mike shared this photo from year’s past when it looks like the whole brood is hollering for food at once.

Any way you look at it,  they are “busy little birds,” Mike said.

Whether it’s birds, insects or new flowers, what goes on the garden is what helps make the world go round. Send a photo of what you see in your yard this week!

As for my yard, visual proof of the cicada’s great summer sounds showed up on my pipevine, of all places. That big green cicadas emerge from ugly little shells is one of those amazing feats of nature.

And this half grown caterpillar on the fennel is proof that black swallowtail butterflies have been doing more than nectaring on flowers this summer!