Home, Sweet Nest

There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. 
-- Henry David Thoreau

I recently finished re-reading Bob Levy's 2006 book about Central Park, its birds and the people who look for them, "Club George." George was the name given to a male red-winged blackbird that was not shy about taking food from human hands. 

Robin nest placed on stairs to an observation deck, 2019
(Margo D. Beller)

Rather than focusing on the birds migrating through this urban oasis in the spring, which is what I do when I visit Central Park, he is more interested in the birds that stay in the park to nest and raise young during the summer. Among the nests he visited on his daily rounds were those of a pair of cardinals, cedar waxwings and several green herons besides monitoring "George's Pond" for signs of young redwings in a number of nests in the tall reeds. His greatest frustration was in not being able to see the chicks. Until the young became big enough to stand up (in the case of the herons) or stick their heads up to be fed (in the case of the other birds), he could not see what was happening in the nest.

I know that frustration.

Somewhere in one of my hedges was the nest where the cardinal pair raised their one surviving chick this year. I know that somewhere in another hedge on the other side of the yard are possibly two catbird nests. 

There are people who like to find active nests and take their pictures. I don't go looking for the nests, although sometimes I find them when the parent bird catches my attention and leads me there. The smallest such nest was the hummingbird nest in a small branch hanging over a brook a few years ago. The largest was the red-tailed hawk nest I found in a tree over a backstreet in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, the year I worked in the area.

Red-tailed hawk on nest, 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

Closer to home, watering one of my bushes at the side of the house, a catbird flew up. Something made me look in back and there on a branch was its mate, steadfastly sitting on her eggs in a woven nest. For the rest of the summer I watered there only when I had to until the birds fledged. That was the last year a nest was built in that particular area.

Robins have the habit of building a lot of "dummy" nests to fool potential predators. I watched a robin build one at the top of the pear tree. The robin sat in it for so long I thought it was a real nest. But one day the bird left and the nest later blew down. There were no eggs in it. Another year a robin put another nest in my spruce tree. I have found robin nests in really strange places, such as on stairs leading to an observation deck and at eye level in trees off heavily traveled foot paths. Recently I went on a hike and a couple of shrieking robins alerted me to their nest in which were two young. When I next checked the area 12 days later, the nest was there but the birds were gone. According to Cornell's Ornithology Lab, the nesting period for robins is 13 days.

Much-photographed wren nest box (Margo D. Beller)

The nest I know best is the wooden box I put into the apple tree every year for the house wrens. However, even though I know where the nest will be, I know little of what goes on inside. Not knowing if there was a viable nest for the longest time was particularly vexing for me this year, although now, judging by the birds' behavior, there has to be a brood. 

I have thought about getting one of those tiny cameras that would fit in the box. Birdcams have become as ubiquitous as the surveillance cameras recording we humans on the streets of major cities or the selfies I see people taking everywhere. Everyone wants to see a picture or, better yet, a video of young birds squished together sleeping or fighting each other to get the regurgitated food from their arriving parent's mouth or, in the case of raptors, whole birds, mammals or fish for them to rip apart. Gross but fascinating.

Viral house wrens? Perhaps next year. For now, I continue to listen for peeping young inside the box.