September, October, and November are the spring months here in Australia. Just as you would see in any Ohio spring, the birds here are busy. Busy selecting mates, busy establishing or re-asserting territories and boundaries, busy looking for nest sites.

As the camellias flowered and blossom heads began to form on the rhododendrons, the smallest birds in our yard were congregating in the trees near to the house in ever increasing numbers. We'd heard the cheerful twittering of in one particular spot – a small, bushy tree growing bravely in the retaining wall immediately above the house. The fairy-wrens chose this tree as a special playground. They bounce around, chasing each other and showing off their courting feathers. They are so quick that it's hard to follow their movements, and we've not yet been able to get a photograph of one.

Fairy-wrens are charming creatures. They are quite small, not much more than five inches from the tip of their beaks to the end of their tails. When I first saw them, I thought I was looking at a finch, but unlike the slim, elongated body of a finch, fairy-wren bodies look a bit like feather-covered ping pong balls. They are round and plump looking, with a narrow tail poking out one end and tiny head on the other. Their beaks are short and so petite that you wonder, looking at them, what they could possibly find small enough to fit in them. When they fly, their tales are held straight back just as other birds are, but when they land, they flick those perky tail feathers straight up as if to say “hey! Here I am!”

Our Australian bird guide shows several pictures of fairy-wrens, most males have blue and white markings, and the females tend to be tan and cream or white. The names of the different kinds of fairy-wrens tell you a lot about how their discoverers felt when they first saw them. There are the Superb Fairy-Wren, the Splendid Fairy-Wren, and the Lovely Fairy-Wren, to name just a few. Some types have vibrant blue feathers and even a splash of red. The ones I'm observing are soft grey blue on the back and pale tan on their bellies, they are Variegated Fairy-Wrens.

I rarely see them flying in the open, except when they dart from the “fairy-wren tree” to the next clump of safe foliage slightly further up the hill. The most open place I've seen them is in the top of our wattle tree. The wattle tree has millions of tiny yellow spring flowers (shaped like a miniature dandelion puff) and the fairy- wrens have been out there nibbling the buds.

Their song is enchanting, a chirpy-chirpy-chit-chit sound, high pitched and dainty. They seem to chirp continually, even in the evening well after the sun has gone down. Many times I've sat well after dark listening to them twitter away to each other in their little tree. They seemed to feel safe there with dense leaves hiding them and the thin branches that were too small for hawks or other bothersome animals to climb or perch on.

Our domestic bird companions enjoy the sound of the fair wrens. Blue, our canary, loves to chirp with them in the morning. Our two green cheek conures have worked out an imitation of their call which never fails to make me laugh. Ned and Kelly try hard to imitate the wrens, but their rendition falls a bit short. The conures' imitation sounds like fairy-wrens with a bad sore throat, but they're still working on it.

You wouldn't think that our blue and gold macaw, Laka, would care much about something so tiny and soft sounding, but she does. The official “bird snuggling chair” where Laka and I cuddle each evening before she goes to bed is right next to the window closest to where the wrens roost. Last summer when we had the windows open, Laka would sit with me and would look up at the window every so often, paying close attention to the soft, delicate song from the darkened hill outside.

In early September spring was in the air. The fairy-wrens seemed to have called in all their friends. A large flock of them (I'd guess about 30-40 birds) danced in and out of the tree, flitting from it to the rhododendrons standing on either side. It was enchanting to watch. I could not see any nests, but I was sure that soon there would be some.

We love living in the quiet seclusion of the rainforest here, enjoying the wildlife and the variety of plants and trees. Being surrounded by large trees does present some problems, however. This past year we had many opportunities to hear and see the eucalyptus trees in the forest suddenly drop huge limbs from high in the forest canopy. Nicknamed “widowmakers”, these trees grow to as high as 300 feet tall, shedding their lower limbs as they do. The sound of a huge gum tree branch cracking and then crashing is memorable; at times it's very much like a gunshot.

Midway through last summer we realized that a particularly huge eucalypt right next to the fairy-wren tree had a couple of large limbs hanging directly over the house. Rather than risk the considerable damage that would occur if those limbs dropped, we called hired a professional tree surgeon to come and remove them safely.

When the tree removers came to trim the trees, I watched for a while and even took a few photographs. I was fascinated as the tree surgeon strapped himself to the tree and then slowly worked his way up the tall straight trunk to the lower branches. He wore thick leather boots with sharp jagged clamps, using them to dig into the trunk and gain enough traction to hang on with his feet as his arms hoisted him ever higher. From his belt dangled a gas-powered chain saw. Once in position, he pulled the chainsaw off the belt, started it up, and began cutting. A partner on the ground a hundred or so feet below used ropes and pulleys to gently guide the freed limbs safely to the ground.

The fairy-wrens wisely evacuated their tree and flew off to safer, quieter haven for the day. Like them, I didn't care to stay around and watch. I left my husband here to keep an eye on things and took myself down the hill with a friend to catch a film at the local theater.

I returned late in the afternoon to find something didn't seem right. At first I didn't quite know what it was, but then I saw the fairy-wrens. A few of them were there, flying back and forth between the two rhododendron trees – but there wasn't anything in between for them to land in!

My husband told me what had happened. The tree surgeon lost control of a branch as it was being guided to the ground. It came thundering down and landed on top of the fairy-wren's tree, splitting it to the base. Rather than leave the fatally damaged tree to wither and die, the tree surgeon cut it down to the ground. No-one had been hurt but there's a sad-looking hole left where the fairy-wrens used to play, sing, and sleep. The one consolation that I have is that there was no evidence that the wrens had built nests there. They were still in the courting phase of mating. Another week or two, and the story might have been much sadder.

Since then I've been watching the wrens. They continue to fly around the space where their tree used to be, but it's breeding season now and the natural cycle of life has caused them to move on. The little flock has relocated to the larger rhododendron tree, and it looks like they will be raising their young under the bright fuschia blossoms that have just begun to open.