Flutter, flutter, bump

In the first light of the morning we woke to the sounds of flutter flutter bump, flutter flutter bump,
...  flutter flutter ...  'Sounds like an old lady moth bumping against the ceiling, trying to get out'.

But it's the wrong time of the year for that. Flutter flutter bump. 

It was a female blue wren attacking her reflection in the window, fluttering up and down in sync with her alter ego. Flutter flutter bump. She kept on at it till our movement sent her off into the garden. Minutes later she was back at the next window, chasing her reflection up and down the glass. Here you can see her rich chestnut eye mask.

Since we came back from our holidays, one of the first things we did was give all the windows a good clean. Obviously it was enough to spark this new behaviour from the wren. I find it strange that it is the female who is doing the attacking, I would have thought it was the domain of the male, but the males have been fairly circumspect lately. In our garden here we have both the blue wren and the red winged wrens flitting about. I love their voice, I call them our natural canaries. They all trill, males and females, perching high with their throats extended as they sing to the world.

Later in the morning a blue male came in to feed with a group of five other females and youngsters, his feathered coat sheening in the patchy sunlight. They are so delicate and light on their legs as they skip over the ground picking up tiny morsels that only they can see.

In the past I have found their nests hidden deep within the Hakea oleifolia that I planted in our garden. The foliage is suitably prickly and dense, and the shrub high enough, that the wrens can nest there secure from predators.