Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Frustration

The past few days I've been watching a robin trying to make her nest. It has been very windy. She chose the usual dried grasses and twigs, but also found something else to her liking.

Every shearing creates waste fiber (lower belly, legs) that I put on the compost pile. The wind scattered it about the yard a bit this spring. Ms. Robin decided it was perfect nesting material. She was probably thinking,"I'll have the warmest and softest nest EVER!"

Poor thing. She would land on a nearby branch, set the fiber down, and it would waft away in the wind. Sometimes it got stuck on another branch, other times it would eventually hit the ground. Each time, she would go about gathering it all back together, put it on the nest, only to have it waft away again. She did this for two or three days. I think she finally gave up. This attempt appears to have been abandoned.

3 comments:

Wendy Bird said...

Hopefully she just found a quieter location, out of the wind.

I have a birdhouse outside my chicken coop and it is very full of chicken feathers and goat fur.Dont hear any cheeping yet though.

~GAM

Eyes to See said...

That is an excellent example of frustration! Poor bird! I hope she succeeded somewhere!

MaineCelt said...

Sounds like Robin and I have had the same week!

We scatter the combings from grooming our Scottish Highland cows (which we do mostly to keep them "socialized," not because it makes much difference in their wild, shaggy appearance). For the past two years, every bird's nest I've found on our property has turned out to have an auburn cowhair lining. It's so sweet!