NATCHEZ — When Dena Green hears a single knock on the front door of her Espero Drive, she knows it’s probably not an overly polite salesman or a neighborhood child knocking and running.

And someone is there, but it’s not a person.

It’s the chirping sparrow that has built a nest — and hatched a family — on her door wreath.

“The mother started building the nest in February,” Green said. “I saw a few leaves in the wreath, and so I asked the kids why they were putting them in there, but the kids said, ‘We didn’t do it.’”

Eventually Green caught sight of the mother bird and figured out what was going on. As time progressed, the nest took shape, and whenever the mother would fly in to land in the nest, located next to the door’s knocker, it would make a single, faint but solid tap.

Then, on March 23, the family discovered that five small, jelly bean-like eggs had been laid in the nest.

The family adjusted their routine, taking the door through the garage to get into the house instead of the front door, and placed a sign outside telling visitors that the nest was real and asking them not to disturb it.

“My cousin came over and wanted to touch the nest,” Green’s daughter Imani Veasey said. “I said, ‘Don’t touch them, they’re very real.’”

The interactions of the six people who live in the house and the bird haven’t been flawless, though.

Once, the bird got confused and flew in the house when someone left the door open.

“I had my son close all the doors except the front door, and eventually she got out,” Green said.

But despite that incident, the family has been able to live peacefully with their newest and closest neighbor.

That’s because on April 15, the first three of the eggs hatched and three live, newborn baby-pink hatchlings emerged. April 18, the remaining two chicks emerged.

“We allow her to do whatever she needs to do,” Green said. “We don’t want her to leave them.”

Having a nest built on their front door has been an odd experience for the family, but Green said she’s glad it happened.

“It has been a very enlightening thing for the children,” she said. “It’s kind of like a science experiment.”