UNKNOWN WINTER BIRD NEST

 Of course this is not a nest of an early bird that arrived just this  February. It is one that was vacated last fall and has been perched in my field entwined with two small saplings. It's a small cup shape with narrowing bottom -- cup mostly dried  grasses while bottom mostly leaves.  About 3  feet off ground.

I find that winter offers our eyes earthly beauty just as other seasons can. In summer my field's wild growth is high and that is undoubtedly why I missed the nest then -- now winter's die-back has exposed this hidden treasure.  I don't know what kind of bird/s built this constructed masterpiece -- perhaps someone can offer up a guess?

A remnant of a recent bit of snowfall can be seen at the bottom of the nest. I considered removing it to my indoor collection. But, I thought, perhaps it might be used again and decided just to enjoy it in its natural surroundings. 

WILDLIFE AND MY SHED

My shed porch with hanging bushel basket

My old shed is rather unique as it has a roomy open porch where one can sit and read or think or do just about anything.  A wood plank door located at the back of the porch leads to an interior room, also roomy with a broad wood shelf along one side. 

When I first moved here, I thought of converting the shed to a studio but soon realized that the hornets, spiders and  insects loved the place more than I did.

And another species soon loved the place when I hung my bushel basket high up on the porch wall.  I soon realized that a couple of little Carolina wrens were zipping in and out of the basket after I had hung it. 

I tilted the basket a bit to peek inside and realized that the wrens were setting up an encampment for their future family. So instead of sitting on the shed's porch to read and think I backed off and and occasionally watched their activities from a distance. I was rewarded by their lovely songs that first summer. 

Now five years later,  they are still using my bushel basket each summer -- hanging on the shed wall just for them. 

As I write this,  the basket nesting site is empty of wrens. Gone also is their  lilting summer songs that they sing during nesting time, especially the male.  I still have an occasional view of the  wrens as they flit about my trees with various short chirpy notes. They stay through the winter. They usually mate for life.

Yesterday my fall  day was heavy with winter-like skies. A sign of the approaching winter season. I realized it was time to start battening down my hatches to keep me warm and safe against winter storms.

Then again, spring will return and the wrens, hopefully, will still be here with me and again decide to nest in my basket. What goes round, comes round as my good friend always used to say. 

I'll keep my basket hanging just in case.

Wren's nesting abode

ROBIN'S NEST

Last week I was out and about running errands when I noticed a lovely robin's nest sitting on an exterior window ledge of an empty store front. Picking up the nest, I noticed some gaping holes in the interior bottom. However its overall structural integrity was fair.


I collect nests but only those that I feel have been abandoned, not to be reused by the bird family again. 


The concept of a nest has always represented home to me. What home one might ask? My answer is --   my home where I live now, where I lived as a child, where I lived as an adult and sometimes where I live in my mind. So you see, I have many homes.


A home usually has bits of the following traits; semblance of a family, structural surroundings to protect one from natural elements, familiarity, and mostly hope. Hope that you can fly, at will, from your nest and be able to return at some point in time. Hope that there will always be family and or familiarity within each home/nest as one ages, and lastly that your nests will remain standing in your mind. Not all of us will be able to experience the family home, familiarity or structural surroundings we once knew.


So maybe someday we might not have the childhood/adulthood homes to revisit. But we will always have the home that we live in at this instant and our home that lives in our mind. 


Robins build and rebuild  homes for their families. For them each rebuild and location is different in some way. They adjust. We can adjust if need be.