3 posts tagged “nests”
I have become reconciled to Spring. Even though it puts the soft chills of Autumn and Winter to flight, I do not resent that pastel-colored season. If Summer is a lazy voluptuous woman, immobile in her thick and fragrant bower, then Spring is blithe and slim: as changeable as sunlight under water, breaking into watery prisms, impossible to count.
Spring is busy. Nature's offspring are born during that verdant time, when the earth becomes lush again and the air is blue and spinning.
During these months, birds become loud, reckless and bold. Where I live, real estate is at a minimum, and the days are strident with their arguments. Gables, street signs, garages, rooftops - all are populated with perfect creatures that maneuver through the air with a mathematical ascendancy.
Their songs pierce the sunlight until the golden fabric becomes a pattern of their febrile joy.
When I walk to work, I always pass by a row of decorative shrubs: prickly, tropical and dense. Once, I heard in their sultry depths the plaintive pwee-pwee of a newborn bird - too childish to realize the danger of its voice. I stopped, hoping I could discern where the nest was. It was then that I saw a peculiar machine perched on top of the shrubbery. It was a mockingbird, rising its wings up and down like an automaton, a heraldic toy.
It was trying to make itself as intimidating as possible. But despite this whimsical masquerade, I moved closer. It was the sight of its needle-like beak, ready to embroider the skin of any intruder, that finally gave me pause. I spoke a few calming words, all the while waiting for the gasp of wings: the impatient breath in my ear should I not be retreating quickly enough.
I have often thought about the words I spoke to that angry parent. Mockingbirds are famous mimics, and I imagined this bird measuring my voice, analyzing its tonal equations. And I hope to hear it again one day, coming back from its green, concealed places or floating down to me from the sky.
Boyfriend's garage has suddenly become a nursery. Three children are blinking at the world from the safety and warmth of their mother's sides.
There are two families. Their homes are ramshackle and the real estate they've chosen is not of the finest. However, only a handful of twigs are necessary to house little beating hearts and comforting feathers.
The doves are back.
We believe that Ms. Dove from last year has returned to her former site. Her furnishings are just as opulent. She has given to the trees and to the sky, one baby:
It's on the small side, as you can see. But as you can also see, Ms. Dove is especially concerned and delicate in her ministrations: a soft ruff of cloudy lavender feathers rest protectively over the little one.
Now, in addition to this pretty friend, a new one has moved in. Ms. Dove #2 lives further back in the garage. She chose a bed of coiled tubing and not much else to raise her family. Comfort was clearly not an option. Rather, a safe and dark hiding place to rest motionless, waiting for the stirring and cracking of her eggs.
She has two fine, healthy babies - twin images foretelling a benign, gentle adulthood. On the day that I took this photo, it was nearly 100 degrees, and as there wasn't much cool air circulating that far back in the garage Mother took a powder, leaving her children silent and staring.
Since then, they have ventured out of the nest, stretching their new wings, wondering at the breeze filtering through the pinions. They'll be gone in a couple of days.
When I was walking home, I saw a curious thing rolling towards me. It was small and light; it was blown across the sidewalk like a bite of tumbleweed. Or it could have been spools of dust drummed up from earth by a confused wind - bursting into confused shapes as it bounced off the sidewalk.
I walked towards it - it was momentarily still, shaking and weary in the indeterminate breeze. I looked closely. It was a bird's nest. Made of countless threads of dried grass and stripped twigs, it was a woven home, a knit of natural things, gently made through the diligence of two sparrows. Little bursts of life, with songs of boldness and pride, they built their nests every Spring, following the commands of the DNA coursing through their veins.
And now the results of one couple's homemaking lay at my feet. The nest was the color of dried flax, and it was the size of a cupped hand. The middle was hollowed out and lined with pale, winsome feathers. Down, plume, semiplume: the parents had dug deep into their breasts to tear out a cushion of warmth that would complete a bed destined to protect a chorus of helpless lives.
Once part of a sparrow commune hidden in the shadowy, airless eaves of the welcoming houses, an errant wind had lifted it from its moorings like Dorothy's prairie home, and taken it for a ride of confusion on the airy columns, streams and currents. Only instead of stopping to crush a witch, it stopped in front of me.
