LYNDA HALLINAN:
Enchanting birds’ nests are centre stage on Lynda Hallinan’s rustic Easter nature table.
on the lookout for adorable birds’ nests
Easter is confusing for country kids down under. In the northern hemisphere, Easter celebrations coincide with the spring equinox (or at least the first Sunday after the first full moon following the equinox) so traditional symbols of rebirth – from fluffy baby chickens to bouncy bunnies – make seasonal sense. But it’s upside down and back-to-front on our farm in autumn, because most of our chooks have gone off the lay and the Easter bunny is staring down the barrel of a gun for getting into my garden…
Easter is even more baffling for my two boys because when I ask if they want to go on an Easter egg hunt, we’re more likely to go foraging for chocolate-brown cayuga duck eggs than Cadbury’s marshmallow equivalents.
Last spring, we raised nine cayuga ducklings in our chicken run. Cayugas are a beautiful American breed with shimmery black and iridescent green feathers, although Mama Duck clearly had a bit of muscovy or mallard on the side, for half of her babies have speckled breasts. Every time I find one of their feathers, I tuck it into a jar on my nature table, alongside a collection of nests and other avian accessories.
Last summer, my children found a beautiful wee bird’s nest that had fallen out of one of our liquidambar trees.
This tiny home, woven from sage-green and silver lichen and insulated with felted sheep’s wool foraged from our yards, was most likely a fantail’s handiwork. “It’s a p wakawaka pe-pi pod,” I told them.
Small, circular and exquisitely crafted, it fitted snugly into the palm of my seven-year-old son Lachlan’s hand. I posted a picture on Facebook and asked: “Does anyone else collect bird’s nests for garden shed vignettes?” The answer, 100 times over, was a resounding yes; that photo remains my most popular social media post so far this year.
Since then, the kids and I have turned into expert empty-nesters. Under the eaves of our shepherd’s hut, starlings made a pretty pied-à-terre from hop vines and dried hydrangea flowers, while sparrows abandoned half a dozen higgledy-piggledy homes in our quince trees. The spongy moss off our rock walls obviously appeals to the thrushes in my citrus trees, who also line their low nests with what looks like mud but is actually a regurgitated leaf-litter plaster. My favourite nests are the cosy chalices crafted by waxeyes, however these are usually too high up to collect so I have to wait for winter winds to knock them off their perches.
Some birds make nests as neatly woven as a raffia basket, while others, like tu , are content to cuddle up amid an amateurish tangle of twigs and straw. Kereru-, according to a self-confessed twitcher friend, “make the type of nests you would expect from drunkards, whereas ka-ruhiruhi, or pied shags, will argue over stick placement.”
The grey warbler is one of our more imaginative indigenous architects; it constructs cute cubby hole nests shaped like teardrops, with a porthole entrance on one side. They look deceptively fragile but are surprisingly sturdy.
Birds care not for building codes; they’ll fashion nests out of anything they can lay their beaks on. “I had one fall out of a tree after a storm,” Clevedon artist Margaret Daube told me, “that was made out of Velcro rollers. I’d quickly pulled them out of my hair one day when surprised unexpectedly by visitors while out in the garden.”
Urban birds can’t afford to be fussy – they’ll scavenge for everything
from bubble wrap to cigarette butts – but here in the country I see nests bound together with frayed lengths of baling twine, pheasant feathers, sheep’s wool and horse hair. Coastal birds can go beachcombing for driftwood, dried kelp and bits of old fishing nets, but I think the most ingenious homemakers are the birds who dart into half-constructed houses to snaffle offcuts of insulation. In the past, Pink Batts probably made for scratchy beds, but eco-friendly panels of polyester GreenStuf are soft and snuggly.
For those undergoing cancer treatment, there’s one very small silver lining to losing your hair. A friend of a friend whose hair fell out during chemotherapy had saved it all in a bag in her garden shed, only for birds to find it and filch the lot. Her neighbour later presented her with an exquisite nest lined exclusively with those lost locks.
If you’re already feeding birds from a cat-proof platform set high in a tree, why not provide a sewing stash for them up there too? I’ve found that any and all donations of wool, fabric scraps, crafting felt, string, moss, lichen, hair and even dryer lint are gratefully recycled.
Grooming a long-haired labradoodle or sheepdog, or saving your spouse a visit to the barbershop? Scatter the trimmings on your lawn and watch the birds whisk it all away. As a bonus, it saves them scratching up and making off with the pea straw mulch from your garden beds.
At this time of the year, old birds’ nests are easy to find, wedged into bare tree branches or tucked deep inside defoliating deciduous hedges. Don’t feel guilty salvaging them as even birds who return to the same trees tend to build new nests each spring.
Store nests in shoe boxes for safekeeping. They make charming Christmas or Easter centrepieces, encircled with micro fairy lights or epiphytic strands of Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides).
Tuck ceramic bird figurines or blownout speckled quail eggs inside small nests, or use larger nests to line pottery bowls, creating the effect of a feathered fringe around a clutch of artificial eggs.
When we started renovating our farm barn, we unearthed a dozen antique ceramic nesting eggs buried under the concrete floor. These solid white eggs are traditionally slipped into nesting boxes to entice young hens to lay (and not peck at their own eggs), or to encourage broodiness for hatching fertilised eggs.
As I write this, the world is going into lockdown over the coronavirus outbreak; socialising is out and self-isolating is the order of the day. In these strange and surreal times, at least there’s some comfort to be had in nesting.