Lately I have been spending those hours where the boys are occupied outdoors with one thing or another, doing some bird nest hunting.  Miles and Rowan are like to join in occasionally, though their attention for it lasts only moments before their little minds are onto something else.  I don’t mind.  It is mostly solo work anyways.  When I first came upon this idea for a way to pass the time, I found myself coming home time and time again with no tally’s to mark off.  Then I began to realize what I was looking for.

I see that they nest in small bushes, often very close to the warmth of my very own house.  They snuggle deep in spanish moss packs.  They often oven nest together.  Little bunches of nests wound up in a tangle of grapevine.  It is a good time to look now, just before the bushes and trees leaf out with their fresh new green for the season.

Many birds, maybe even most birds, build a new nest each year so in autumn I could perhaps find a nest or two to bring indoors and display as a trophy for all my searching.  For now, I can’t be sure whether these nests are current or old, so I will hold out, though they are extremely enticing.  I find myself day dreaming about upside down glass domes encasing little pieces of  woven time high on a shelf out of reach from little hands.

Wood storks are a migratory bird we get the pleasure of seeing.  Their path is incredibly short, sometimes just a pond south for the winter then back up a block north again for the hot months.  They make their giant nests of yellowed marsh grass and broken cat tails.  Enormous that they are, it still is enticing to see them dragging those swifts of grass through the air over and over again.  Exhausting I am quite sure.

But those are off-limits.  I won’t be even coming close enough to peer in any time soon.  As an endangered species they are protected and even if I had the chance, I know better.  So, I will stick to the tiny nests tucked into the corners of my very own yard.  Wrens and sparrows and other song birds that peck from our feeder and sip from our bird bath.  I have found dozens at this point.  I could draw you a map.

My boys often busy themselves with the task of roping in other tiny creatures.  They can take hours off their day by winding up little tufts of grass and laying out tiny stones for the fairy folk.

Of course I never can resist in joining in.  It is all such dainty fun.  This business of staying home isn’t all bon bons and movies, I am sure of this, but sometimes… just sometimes… it gives me the (secret) glinting impression that it is.