You might have heard a Wren complain, chattering and scolding, shouting at you to get away. They do that sometimes when we get too close to their house in the backyard. There’s no mistaking their instructions.
Go, go, go away! Go away, you! Get out! Get out! Get out!
Yesterday afternoon, there was a disturbance of some kind in our front yard. A great noise was coming from the Monterey Oak, and the racket was deafening. It was Wrens — perhaps a dozen of them chattering and scolding and hopping angrily from branch to branch.
I stood there looking up, trying to find the source of their concern, expecting to find a cat slinking through the Salvias and Sunflowers, but there was no cat to be seen.
“Where’s the snake?” Trudy asked as she walked up behind me, having herself heard the ruckus from inside the house.
We walked closer to the tree, expecting to find a rat snake slithering in the branches, but there was no snake to be seen, either.
And then I saw it — the cause of the commotion. Sitting motionless on a branch about fifteen feet off the ground was an Eastern Screech Owl. It blended (almost) perfectly with the gray-brown of the oak tree’s trunk, staring toward the neighbors’ Live Oaks, evidently unfazed by the Wren racket around it.
We sat on the bench. The Wrens began to quiet down. And then they started screaming again.
I stood up. The Owl was gone. Except the Wrens were still up there as loud as ever. So I looked harder.
And there… there perched on a branch that extended horizontally from the trunk and took a sharp turn vertically upwards… there was the Owl. And that poor Owl, I kid you not, was leaning against that vertical turn of the branch, as if the screaming and scolding of the Wrens had worn it out. A dozen scolding Wrens — who could blame the Owl for needing a little rest?