LETTER FROM BOBOLINK FARM
COME, FILL THE CUP
By Barbara Tatham Johnson
“He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in
winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see
them...”
Henry David Thoreau, Journal entry for December 30, 1855
To ward off the dreariness of approaching ice and snow at the time of winter
solstice, I walk Bobolink Farm seeking last season’s nests. I know the
location of several that my husband, sharp-eyed and alert, showed me in the
building stage or with female birds incubating eggs. The momentary return to
a sunny May afternoon or hot August morning is a golden sip of anti-winter
tonic.
In May a chipping sparrow chose a bough tip of the white cedar near the
chicken coop to locate her nest. Her building activity was surprisingly
obvious, and no sooner had she laid her fourth egg then a blue jay dropped
in and devoured them. She renested in a more secluded spot that we, and we
hoped the blue jay, did not find. Now I find the sparrow’s first little cup
of tightly woven fine grass tilted. It is firmly held in the cedar bough.
The subtle greens of the fresh grass she used are faded, but I admire the
lining of blond horsehair—an unused airy soft nursery bed—inside.
A robin’s nest on a branch midway up and wedged close to the trunk of the
red astrachan apple tree surprises me. I knew a robin nested in the spy gold
apple tree. I saw three youngsters fledge this nest. Robins may raise more
than one family and build a new nest for each, if the season is long and
mild. Robins build bulky sturdy nests firmly attached with mud to a branch
with a smooth inner cup of mud lined with fine grasses. Exposed all winter,
the nests remain solidly intact.
The Maine legislature enacted a law that makes it illegal to collect birds’
nests, fearing too much collecting could affect reproductive success in some
species. Although robins usually build anew in spring, old nests do provide
winter shelter to many other creatures. Frequently, we find old catbird cup
nests completely stuffed with milkweed silk, the hollow interior a cozily
insulated mouse nest. Wood frogs have been discovered hibernating in
woodland species' nests. Leaving old nests in place is best.
The majority of birds on Bobolink Farm build cup nests. In A Field Guide to
the Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds, Colin Harrison
wrote, “The material used is usually fairly pliable and the bird sits in the
structure as it builds, placing material, pulling in loose ends and tucking
them gradually into the existing framework to one side or the other and
gradually producing the typical round shape. As the softer lining is added
the bird shapes the cup to its own body, sitting in it with bill and tail
uplifted, rotating a little, pressing with chin and under-tail coverts, and
flexing bill and tail downwards to consolidate the rim. It also pushes
backwards with the feet, enlarging the lower cup a little, and the final
structure fits snugly around the sitting bird leaving room for the eggs
beneath it.”
The most delightful description of nest building I have found is in Michael
Harwood’s Moments of Discovery. He writes of the black-chinned hummingbird,
a western species, but the account could substitute for the ruby-throated
hummingbird that also uses plant fiber and cobwebs. “[The female
hummingbird] builds her nest mostly of plant down, shapes it into a sphere—a
small, cottony sugar bowl with the top removed—and lashes it in place with
cobwebs. It is so well constructed that it can last through several seasons,
and often an old nest will serve as foundation for a new one. It has the
elasticity of a sponge. ‘As the young continue to grow,’ wrote Bayard H.
Christy, ‘a beautiful contrivance comes into play: the surrounding wall of
the nest becomes as it were a living integument about the chicks. It expands
with their growth; its rim yields to their little strugglings; its sphere
opens like a flower bud; until the little birds, all but ready to take
flight, remain resting upon the full blown corolla...It is like a cocoon:
within its chamber a metamorphosis takes place; a new creature emerges,
sloughs off the confining walls, and flies away.’” I have not found a
hummingbird’s nest, but the difficulty of the ongoing search will not lessen
the possibility I might spy one on a branch as I walk beside the stream.
In August a song sparrow built the last of her three nests among stems of a
large clump of golden yarrow in the kitchen garden. I noticed her quick
exits when I gathered herbs nearby, and peeking carefully into the yarrow, I
saw four eggs nestled in a rough but sturdy grass cup. The nest was not as
nicely constructed as that of the chipping sparrow but was better hidden. I
stopped picking thyme and dill for almost two weeks, and the young sparrows
fledged on a hot humid morning.
I see last season’s nests tucked among the bare branches and leafless brush
not as containers emptied by the passage of time and lives gone south but as
cups full of beauty, reminders of new life to come as the sun swings higher
above the horizon. 
