A pair of Willow Street bluejeans have become prime real estate for two little brown songbirds, who are building a nest in one of the pockets.
A bird family built a nest in these pairs of bluejeans, hanging on the wash line in the backyard of D
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This songbird is checking out his new home, located in these bluejeans, on the wash
line of Dave and
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About three weeks ago, Susie Butt — who always hangs her laundry out to dry in the back yard of her Radcliffe Road home — reached into a pocket of a pair of her jeans and found a little bundle of twigs.
"I thought, that's strange, but I didn't think any more about it," she says.
But then her husband, Dave, found another, bigger bundle of twigs in a pocket of his jeans.
Pretty soon, they began to notice a little brown bird hanging out by the laundry line. Then his mate arrived.
"The little guy was watching me hang the wash," says Butt, a secretary at Gam Manufacturing in Lancaster. "And I kept finding twigs in the pockets. These birds were determined to make a nest."
But with so many pairs of jeans drying on the line — both the Butts practically live in jeans — the birds were getting confused, filling the pockets of all different pairs of jeans with twigs.
So about two weeks ago, her husband, plant manager at Polycaster Technologies in Willow Street, donated a pair of old jeans. Butt moved her wash to another line, and the birds got to work.
"I felt in the pocket and it's jammed, there's definitely a nest in there now," she says.
The family is making itself at home.
"This morning the male was singing and when I walked by the line, mama flew out of the pocket," Butt says laughing. "I can get fairly close to them and they sing at me."
The male likes to hang out on the trellis, which is about eight feet high, sing and survey his new neighborhood. The only problem neighbor is a robin, who chases him off the trellis.
"The nest is good and safe," Butt says. "No animals can really get into it. A cat can't even reach it."
Butt isn't sure what kind of birds the nest makers are, mainly because they are so tiny. Tiny enough to fit easily into the pocket of the jeans.
"It's smaller than a house wren, smaller than a finch," she says. "They are the cutest little brown- and rust-colored birds."
But they do look a lot like house wrens and are behaving like them, too. Wrens build their nests in cavities and have been known to set up house in crazy places like old shoes.
Butt jokes that her backyard is like "Wild Kingdom" in the morning and has always had a lot of birds.
"We have some big pine trees and cardinals, doves and robins build nests there. We had Baltimore Orioles nesting here last year," she says. "Our property has some woods and it's really quiet. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on."
But the nesting songbirds are taking center stage right now and the Butts are awaiting the blessed event. Then Susie Butt can get her wash line back.
Staff writer Jane Holahan can be reached at jholahan@LNPnews.com or 481-6016.
