We have fairies at the end of our garden, picking aphids off the new shoots on the Tahitian lime trees. Even more fairies are tucking into the aphids on the Parson's Blush rose, too, which has begun to bloom outside my study.
The fairies have also been taking away the cobwebs on our windowsills, which is a good excuse for not washing the windows: the fairies need the cobwebs to build their nests. Sadly this excuse won't work much longer, as the female fairies will be laying their eggs soon, three or four in each oval nest with its entrance in the middle. The baby fairies will hatch a fortnight after that, and all the fairies, from Dad to last year's brothers and sisters, will help feed them.
These aren't the fairies with gauzy wings and ballerina skirts, who sleep in foxglove flowers, or will turn the milk sour in the cow if you don't leave a saucer of milk out for them. (I suspect a cat conspiracy was responsible for that legend).
These are the tiny superb fairy wrens, Malurus cyaneus, also called "blue wrens" as the males develop a rich blue colour on their heads and chests when old enough to mate. The "Jenny wren" females are part soft brown and part soft grey, but their tails perk up just like the males'. At this time of the year you might catch the female waiting - a role women still play all too often - while the blokes battle it out for the right to mate with her. She won't care who wins, as she's already chosen, and will go off with the loser as often as the winner.
Fairy wrens "marry" for life, but both males and females sometimes mate with others for a spring fling. This is not in any way a metaphor or advice for humans: just an observation from 50 years of watching fairy wrens out the window, or bobbing behind me in the garden when I pull up a carrot, in case a delicious worm or larvae grub is revealed. One would even perch on the edge of my gum boot, if he thought I was going to pull out the gone-to-seed winter cabbages and bok choi.
The wrens also know to follow Bryan whenever he takes a spade or garden fork out of the shed, and they warn us, and others, with alarm calls when they see egg-eating brown snakes.
If you have enough fairy wrens, you'll have few pests. If you have a fairy wren deficiency, you can attract them with a shallow dish of water, preferably hung from the eves or a tree branch where cats can't disturb them, with a lid half way down the wire that holds the bowl up, to stop rats and possums from climbing down to it.
Fairy wrens' territory can be four hectares or a single backyard, if it's a good one. Plant a nice thick hedge so they can build a safe nest there, or a giant rambling thorny rose, but not near a large gum tree, partly because hedges and gum trees don't always mix, but also because larger birds like magpies, kookaburras and currawongs will perch on the branches and scare the tiny fairies.
Our fairies love thorny white-flowered bursaria thickets to nest in, as well as the rambling roses. Sometimes the wren families do a bit of renovation and reuse a nest, especially if it's in a safe position with lots of flowers and small pests to feast on. Other times they'll build a new nest, but in either case, they need the spider's webs.
They also adore flowers high in nectar, like banksias and salvias and just now, red hot pokers, except ours are yellow, not red. As well as the nectar there are hundreds of small insects gobbling the nectar that fairy wrens like too. Wrens will also do away with small grasshoppers, flies caught in cobwebs, and the fairy wren version of take-away, sitting just above our fly traps, where dinner comes to them.
Once you get to know a family of wrens, they are your neighbours for life. Each bird may only live two years or so, but some survive for much longer than a decade, and the territory is inherited by their kids. Once they get to know you are a gardener - or even the one who pulls out the carrots someone else has planted - they will wait by the back door for you as soon as they glimpse you putting on your gumboots or gardening shoes.
Even if they didn't do much of our pest control, I'd still love them. It's a bird soap opera just out the window. Who will Jenny choose today? When will the chicks appear or begin cheeping? Will Jenny and Blue raise one bunch of chicks this year, or two?
You don't even need to turn on a screen. Plant the hedge or thickets, lots of grevilleas, banksias, salvias of many kinds, plus any shrub that puts out shoots that aphids love in spring, and you can share your life with fairies.
This week I am:
- Planting more hydrangeas, as our garden has lots of dappled shade, which hydrangeas adore. Hydrangeas may wilt in droughts or even lose their leaves, but will regrow. They are great survivors, and fabulous bloomers. Ours are mostly as vivid as possible, as my husband thinks a white flower a waste of space that could be blue or red or purple, but I adore the white ones too. Oak leafed hydrangeas give stunning autumn foliage.
- Still not planting out tomatoes.
- Remembering again how glorious apple blossom is, be it white, or pink, or pink and white, or the deep red blooms from the new varieties that are red-flowered, red-skinned and red-fleshed. The flowers of every variety are different, and bloom at different times too. The bees gathered on some this year are so loud you can hear the hum 200 metres away.
- Picking tall blue Louisiana iris for the vases, but Cath is saving me two bunches of her enormous proteas that she's selling at the Araluen markets on Sunday. Two weeks of a protea-filled house will be magic. If you head down early enough, at say 11am, you may get to buy some of the marmalade or cordial made by the Saucy Ladies of Araluen, or Araluen fruit and veg, seedlings, and possibly enough gifts to see you right for the next year.
- Picking and eating asparagus.
