As I look out my study window and across the neighboring field, I can see the signal flags of the red maples that line the woodland border flashing in the bright September sunshine.
Summer is on the wane, and before many more days have passed Autumn, with all its colorful splendor and pageantry, will be with us once again.
Indeed, there are many signs that Fall is fast approaching. Apples are reddening in the orchard, and peaches with downy cheeks are hanging temptingly from slender branches.
Everywhere berries are ripening, squirrels and woodchucks are preparing for the Winter, and birds are leaving on their southern flights.
Even the trees are beginning to sprinkle the ground with their leaves, and soon their naked branches will describe a tracery against the blue October sky.
Catbird’s Nest
Then I will find the nest of the catbirds, which I searched for in vain in the dense roadside thicket a few short weeks ago.
The nest of the wood thrush, whose bell-like notes were issued from the nearby woods, and fell upon the silent country air on warm June nights like some wandering strain from another world, will be revealed.
Even the exquisite basket of the oriole, swinging in the October breeze from the drooping branch of a towering elm, will be more in evidence.
Kinds of Bird Nests
I must confess that at one time, a nest to me was merely a mass of heterogeneous materials, ingeniously put together to be sure, but of no value except to the bird that made it, and that one nest was very much like another.
But I have since discovered that nests are not the prosaic things they appear to be, and they are not all alike; they vary as much in shape and size, in the kind of materials used, and in location as much as the birds themselves vary in size, coloration, and habits.
Perhaps of even greater interest, I also discovered that their study could be a rewarding and fascinating pastime and that it is no difficult task to learn to identify them since their makers follow more or less definite patterns; with a little practice, one can become adept at it.
Bird Building Nest
Most of us, I am afraid, give only a cursory glance at a bird’s nest, unaware of the romance associated with it.
One day last Spring, this thought came to mind when I observed a male house wren carrying a stick for nest building.
I don’t know how many sticks the bird had collected or would continue to collect, or, for that matter, whether he was even building a nest. He could have saved himself the trouble of doing so because his mate would use neither the sticks nor the nest.
He was, however, merely performing an age-old ritual, for the practice of building “dummy nests” is a part of their courtship ceremony as the male arrives earlier than the female and, while waiting for her, spends his time filling every nesting box and cranny in the nesting area with sticks and even building well-shaped nests.
But his mate will have no part of any nest that he may have built but builds her own with materials that they both gather and in a place that she selects.
Some of the sites that she chooses are unusual indeed; an old felt hat on top of a scarecrow, a leather mitten on a shop shelf, the skull of an ox or cow stuck up on a pole, an old tin can, or the fold of a blanket hanging on a clothesline.
Where Birds Build Their Nest
Birds build their nests in all sorts of places, many of them in the most inaccessible locations. In the Summer, when the trees and shrubs are in complete foliage, we often pass them by or overlook them even when searching for them.
But when October and November arrive, and the brisk Autumn winds clear the trees and shrubs of their Summer dress, many nests which were artfully concealed only a few short weeks before become exposed in the most unexpected places.
These nests, to be sure, may not be in such perfect condition as when they were newly completed, but it is surprising how well they can withstand the buffeting of the elements and endure even into the following Spring without losing their identity.
Even today, after many years of studying the ways of our wildlife, I still marvel at the patience exhibited by the smaller birds in gathering innumerable tiny types of grass, bits of string and fibers, bark shreds, twigs, and fine hairs and the skill with which they weave them into structures sufficiently strong to withstand the winds and rains of Summer.
Of course, not all birds go to such lengths; some of them, such as the killdeer, the spotted sandpiper, and the upland plover, merely deposit their eggs in a crudely-lined hollow in the ground; others, like the whippoorwill, do nothing more than lay their eggs among dead leaves, as if aware that they resemble so closely the color and pattern of the forest floor that only with difficulty can they be detected; and still others, like the woodpeckers, use natural holes in trees or holes they excavate.
A few birds, like the cowbird, even make use of the nest of a bird of another species and leave the raising of the young to foster parents. However, most birds have gone a little further and built nests that, although crude, are serviceable.
44659 by Richard Headstrom