Monday, March 1, 2010

I found another one!

Can you see it? Hanging from the tree near the center of the photo.

Here's a closer look.

Yep, it's another oriole nest! I'd noticed it a couple weeks ago, but I couldn't get near enough to it to take a decent picture, because I'd have sunk over my knees into the snow. But this morning I noticed that the snow has gotten hard enough that I can walk on top of most of it, so I headed back to the house and grabbed the camera. I could get right up underneath the nest!

Just look at the intricacy of that work! Here are several different views.

It looked to be mostly made of "threads" from plastic twine that's used to wrap hay bales. The salmony orange and turquoise make a nice color combination, don't you think? What a lot of work those birds did!

I had found a stick that I thought I could hook the branch with and pull it down far enough to cut the branch and get the nest for even closer examination. (I even had a little pruner in my pocket to cut it off with.)

(Click any photo to enlarge.)

Unfortunately, when I got it far enough down that I could jump up and grab the tips of the longest branches, they broke off in my fingers. So the pic above is the best I could do. But just look at how that twine is wrapped around those branches! Wow! I would love to watch them doing all that!

And don't miss that AWESOME blue sky!!!! It was just so gorgeous out this morning! I took many more photos, so be expecting to see them in the days ahead.

4 comments:

JHNickodemus said...

Do you donate scraps to the birdies ever?

Grandma G said...

Donate scraps? Like what did you have in mind?

I feed hummingbirds, orioles, and finches from feeders during the warmer months. (I guess you weren't following my blog last summer? Check out links to those birds from the left sidebar.) Most winter birds go to more sheltered areas during the winter, so we don't have many here. My finch feeder is still out, but no birds have been on it for months.

Live a Colorful Life said...

that is really amazing. such detailed work. Really beautiful pictures!

Becky said...

That is amazing!

I often put threads and skinny scraps in to the compost pile. It's fun to watch the birds fly off with 'em.