Trimming a small deciduous tree in my garden, the tangled branches of a maple looking a little worse for wear without its leaves, I came across a grey fantail’s nest, one of nature’s marvels of engineering.
It was a now discarded home which could win a master builder’s award for construction. The nest was built of strands of dry grass and moss and was anchored to a forking branch, low down in a dense part of the tree. The nest dangled downwards and had the appearance of an elegant wine glass. It was bulbous at the top, the grass stems tapering to a thin stem and then flattening out in what looked like the base of the glass.
Winter and early spring is the time of year when a specialist kind of birder, the oologist, takes to the wing, so to speak, looking for bird nests exposed in leafless trees. Oology has a rhythmic, poetic ring to it. When I first discovered the word I thought it was the representation of a bird call, an onomatopoeic refrain. I was wrong on that score but right it was about birds. It is in fact the study of birds’ nests and eggs and breeding behaviour.
At this time of the year I become a fanatical oologist, hunting high and low for platforms of sticks in blue gums, or cups of dried mud buried deep in the heart of yellow bottlebrushes.
Most nests are miracles of architectural design, engineering and construction to rival building projects in humankind’s world. Not only do they incorporate the requirement for shelter – a house or home – they must counter the absolute extremes of temperature and the elements, to withstand storm and tempest. They must also be built with foresight, to meet the demands of a growing family and all the physical pressures of bulging bodies, and thrusting beaks.
Nests are totally without solid foundation unless laid on rock, as with some seabirds. A nest’s foundations generally rely on the strength of the host structure, a stout shrub or the roots of a fallen tree. The nest is more a question of balance. To keep its shape, it must be able to move with a swaying branch in the wind, or absorb the weight of rain in a storm.
A bird’s nest-building skills are implanted in its DNA, handed down by those that have got it right over the eons. Research suggests the builders are constantly honing their skills.
Searching for other nests along the Pipeline Track below Ferntree in late winter I found another of my favourites, that of the Bassian thrush. This is the type of nest we are all familiar with, a large cup of delicately interwoven twigs and grass. It’s a cliche of a nest, the one you would expect to see in a cartoon or children’s book but it does the business.