If South Carolinians want to be known for tenacity, courage, and taking care of our own, we could have done a lot worse than choosing the Carolina Wren as our state bird. At least that's the impression I got from an encounter with a pair of these birds while fixing my '78 Ford van.

This van has 119,000 miles on it, many accumulated on marathon trips to and from graduate school in Minnesota and Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania. Some of my students view the "TanVan" as a live member of our extended family, and they warmly remember field excursions we've made in this venerable vehicle.

When vans get into the 100,000 mile club, they often develop gout, arthritis, and other infirmities associated with the ageing process; I regret to say that mine is no exception. While driving it in May, tremendously loud juddering noises made me think I had blown the transmission and the rear end simultaneously. After the van sat comatose in the driveway for a month I was relieved to hear from a shade tree technician that I had merely lost my bearings--the ones in the middle hanger on the driveshaft, that is. It turns out that this is a minor repair the mechanic said I could do myself, so I pulled together my vast collection of mismatched tools and went to work.

I crawled beneath the vehicle about 9 a.m. one June Thursday and worked for an hour unbolting the hanger bracket; about ten o'clock my mechanically-minded brother Stan miraculously arrived from Batesburg. As I emerged from my workspace to greet him, I noticed a pair of Carolina Wrens scolding us loudly from the pecan tree above the van, and I wondered what might be irritating them.

Stan and I took an iced tea break inside the house, and when we returned I saw a wren land under the fender on the left front tire. My immediate thought was that the van had sat too long in one place and that the two wrens had appropriated it as a nest site; that would explain their earlier chatter. I looked into the fender and at the underframe and behind the bumper, and because a vent window had been open since the bearing malfunction, I even looked inside the vehicle. I found no evidence of a nest, so Stan and I crawled back under and spent another hour removing the driveshaft.

After that it was off to downtown York in Stan's car to press off the old bearing, and then to buy a new one that had to be pressed back on; in the meantime we also got hungry and took the leisure of a one-hour lunch break. Thus refreshed, we left for home and as we entered the driveway at Hilton Pond, I saw a Carolina Wren again, this time flying away from that very same wheel one had been on earlier. Once more I looked in, around, and under the van but could find no nest, so the loud chatter of the adult wrens still had me bewildered.

Stan and I spent the next hour learning the wrong way to put back a driveshaft, but we finally figured out this automotive madness and got all the bolts locked down. Being wild and courageous, I suggested we take the vehicle out for a test drive, and after an oil transfusion and a little CPR with the jumper cables, we got the old geezer rolling and out of the driveway.

We cruised slowly down some back roads for 20 minutes or so and decided to risk it on the open highway, where driving faster than 30 miles an hour brought back the same deafening rattle that I had heard when the bearing first went out. So, amid heavy traffic on the main drag in York, we crawled under one more time and felt pretty sheepish to find we hadn't quite seated the driveshaft in the universal. After a few twists of the old socket wrench, we had things lined up just right, with no rattles even at breathtaking speeds of up to 55.

By now it was 3 p.m., and Stan had to be in Rock Hill, so I asked him to follow me as far as Northwestern to be positive the driveshaft was up to snuff. No problems emerged on the 12-mile trip, so I left him and worked a few hours in my classroom cleaning and filing last year's keepsakes.

After all this, I drove the van back home and noticed along the way that no air was coming through the floorboard vent. With such incriminating evidence, serious suspicions crossed my mind, and upon returning to Hilton Pond I immediately looked through the grill at the vent intake. There, of course, was the elusive Carolina Wren nest. By this time it was nearly dusk, so I tried to park the van in the same location where it had been for a month and hoped for the best.

Next morning I arose at dawn to inspect the dastardly damage I knew I must have done to the nest. I spent a half hour loosening the grill far enough to squeeze in my hand. All the while, two adult Carolina Wrens overhead were making a racket of sizeable proportions--enough to attract chickadees, titmice, robins, jays, and a woodpecker. I managed to remove the nest intact and, incredibly enough, inside it were an egg and four one-day-old wren chicks.

Here were four baby birds who were just hatched the day before and they already had more miles on them than some adults. They'd been around York, to Rock Hill and back--and they made the trips in steerage, right beside a hot, noisy engine. And who knows how long they had been unbrooded by the female the day before while we worked on the van.

I was obviously in a quandary; I certainly wanted to help these tenacious birds, but I also wanted to be able to use the van now that it was fixed. I decided to draw upon the apparent perseverance of the adult wrens. I stood a log on end in front of the van and topped it off with an unused bluebird box that I had in my shop. Then I put the nest and its complement of chirping baby wrens into the box, backed off, and waited for a countermove from the adults. I watched for an hour but never saw either parent approach the box, so I gave up and went off to eat blackberries.

That afternoon I walked quietly to the nest box and tapped on it. No movement, no response. I opened the lid, and my heart beat very strangely after the female wren exploded noisily from the nest. What a feeling of relief to know that she had accepted my relocation of the box, and how gratifying to see that the four chicks were apparently healthy.

It's too late to make this long story short, but there is a sequel to it. The unhatched egg stayed that way, apparently unfertilized from the start. A week after the relocation I checked the box again to find that the nestlings were half-feathered. I banded the four babies, placed them in the box one more time, and two days later they fledged.

I've seen the whole family since, lined up on an oak branch with all the youngsters begging and flapping for mom and pop, who still scold me when I get too close for comfort.

I just hope they find a non-vehicular nest site for their next brood.

Back to Piedmont Naturalist Volume 1 (1986)