With Covid 19 raging around the world and we like other Badgers being more or less housebound, our thoughts have turned to gardens and yard work. On the topic of yards, I’m claiming that we have the UGLIEST bird house in Manitowoc county or anywhere. It’s meant, for unknown reasons, to resemble a Holstein cow and it sports a tail and horns. Lynn said it was “darling” (I don’t think she has taken a close look at it) and wrens love it. We are told by the former owner of our Oak Street house that the wren house has been occupied every spring for years. It is so ugly I took it down in the fall and it spent the winter on a shelf in the garage, its smashed-in face turned toward the wall. I didn’t want it in view but finally and reluctantly hung it out late Saturday afternoon. By sunrise Sunday morning, wrens had claimed it and the male wren sang lustfully from the crab apple tree waving his little wings and interrupting his song only to chase gold finches off a nearby net of cotton. His wife was gathering twigs for their nest.
The wrens don’t use the official entrance opening between the Holstein's nostrils, but come and go through the smashed-in forehead above its more-human-than-cow eyes. If anyone has an uglier bird house please send picture.
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