I swear I left the door open for just a couple of hours, as I tended the garden and the dogs.  Swoosh! at my head came a LBB, the bane of a birder’s existence while in the field.  Little Brown Bird is the go-to scientific identification for all sorts of sparrows and wrens that so closely resemble each other that only intense field scrutiny can resolve the question – what did I just see.  So on that afternoon, the swiftness of flight and my startled response to a bird flying back to front out of my garage left me with but one conclusion: I had an LBB trying to nest in my garage.  IN my garage.

I do not want the interior of my house or even my garage becoming a site of passerine development and I immediately searched the space in front of my headlights.  Yep.  There it was. Tucked high above my reach on a decrepit sheet of burlap, woven bits of leaf litter, moss, twigs created a shallow cup in the shelf corner.  Clue number one that Little Brown Bird was a wren.  

Clue number two was heard as I tended flower beds and dogs, garage door CLOSED, the next day:  teakettle-teakettle-teakettle. The chunky little brown bird darted into a nearby pine shrub, and perched with its tail held high. Clue number three.

 Teakettle-teakettle-teakettle.

Now I was certain that a Carolina Wren sought my garage shelf for development.  I kept the garage door closed, for the next day or two,surely long enough, I thought, to encourage this picky wren to seek other marvelous real estate in my wooded property.

Yesterday, I once again kept the garage open, as I tended the garden and the dogs.  Life was easy.  For everyone. Including my Little Brown Bird.

Suffice it to say, I removed the nest before this development had gotten too far.

May I suggest, LBB, my hanging fern?