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The birdhouse is perfect. An east-facing entrance, with shade in the afternoon, the box nestles in a crab apple tree, above a garden with a thousand plants. Next door is the neighbor’s lot thick with prairie grass and weeds, broken cars silhouetted in green and yellow, waves of scrub and seed.
The house wrens recognize the humans as peaceful folk and like the look of the roost. Weathered, with yellow tin stars decorating the front, it has a nice perch and an entrance small enough to keep out predators.
They are a chipper young couple and when the first crop of eggs hatch, they sing to the heavens praise for their good fortune. The male, elated, struts on a wire fence, bobbing his tail with a melodic blast of joy. An animalistic frenzy, the celebration never wains, it just transitions into work. Now the wrens, both mama and papa, are hunting for five.
A human watches, an artist, a professional who strives for accuracy in their observations. Watching the wren’s work to feed their peeping, cheeping young it’s not data that gets collected; the artist collects feeling.
What’s it like to have found joy in such a simple, repetitive task? Carry food in and, as the chicks being to molt, carry bits of fluff and…
