***disclaimer: how this Carolina Wren family decided on this particular prime real estate existing in the slender opening of a tilt and turn screened window is beyond my limited human comprehension.
Sharing a bathroom with a nesting Carolina Wren was,I’d liked to think, a lesson in humility and in the inviolability of nature’s routines over my own. I had had always considered myself a morning person, but the wrens—compact, restless rhythms were earlier still, as if they had invented the very concept of dawn. If my presence was required for any reason—no matter how urgent, no matter how existentially significant to my own bodily comfort— I could not enter without feeling as though I was personally thwarting the entire reproductive future of the Carolina Wren as a species.
More than once, I caught myself holding my breath so as not to disturb the delicate atmosphere, as if the tiny sleeping forms would sense the carbon dioxide in the air and rouse themselves in protest.
Photos of Wrens I have taken over the years:
Bird Lady of Turtle Island 