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In 2016 I’m doing a 365 Nature project. Each day of the year I will post something here about nature. It may be any format, a photo, video, audio, sketch or entry from my nature journal. It could be a written piece. Each day I will connect to nature in some way and share it here by the end of that day. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to the RSS feed or be notified by email. See all the 365 Nature posts.


I have not seen or heard any sign of our nesting Bewick’s Wrens today. My plan to take photos of the adults and try and record the chicks calling today has hit a roadblock. I’m not sure what has happened to them, to the best of my knowledge they hatched only 9 days ago and I read on All About Birds the nestling period is 14-16 days. If they had fledged, I would think I’d see them around, the parents still feeding them. Yet I have seen no activity at all around our yard, either at the nest box or around it. I did hear the neighboring Bewick’s Wren singing today, but no response from our male.

The robin nest on the other hand has seen quite a lot of activity. The parents both come and go and today when I got close and peaked up at the nest, I was astonished to see one of the chicks already sitting on the edge of the nest. A dramatic change from Day 133 when they were pink and barely had their eyes open and Day 135 when they were just starting to get feathers. There are still three chicks and while two seem to stay in the nest, the third ventures out to the surrounding branches in between visits from the adults. They keep a curious, but wary eye on me as I try to take photos of them at the nest. It’s no easier than it had been, but at least they’re bigger targets to try to capture.

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Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner is a naturalist, writer and artist based in Seattle. She is the author of THE NATURALIST AT HOME: Projects for Discovering the Hidden World Around Us and NATURE OBSCURA: A City’s Hidden Natural World from Mountaineers Books, a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and Pacific Northwest Book Awards. She writes articles about natural history and has bylines in Crosscut, Popular Science, National Wildlife Magazine and others. On the side she writes fiction.

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