Nerve wracking then sad

Baby wrens grow really fast! If you'll recall, last week I posted photos of little Carolina wrens in a log bird house that hangs outside our bedroom window. They barely had their eyes open. Well, Sunday evening, I saw what I thought was one that had fallen out of the house. So I ran outside but couldn't catch the little fellow. If I had, I'd planned to return the bird child to the house. They were way too young to fledge. Or so I thought.

I went back inside our house and watched out the window again. Well, daggum it, a SECOND bird child tumbled out of the house! What? Then...yes, you guessed it....a third jumped out, followed by the fourth! For the rest of the evening, I was a nervous wreck, trying to make sure the little ones were discovered by predators (like, I have to confess, our elderly female cat).

Can you see the spread-out tail of a parent wren, perched on a branch to the left of the house? This baby was the last one to jump ship. They barely had feathers!

Here's the sad part. The next day, I saw a grackle on the other side of our chain-link fence, carrying something small in its beak. As I headed outside and around to the neighbor's side of the fence, the grackle dropped what it'd been holding. 

I had my sad suspicions about what I might find. 

I was right. A dead baby wren lay in the grass. That's nature, I told myself. The very sad side of nature. I'm hoping and praying the other three little ones somehow survived.