Oriole nest decorations

When I was taking the photos I showed you yesterday, I happened to notice a baltimore oriole nest in our maple tree. They have made a nest in that tree every year for several years now.

I also noticed that this nest had something blue hanging from it. If you look REALLY close, you can barely see it in this next photo, below and to the left of the nest.

I took those pics in the morning, so there was too much contrast against the sun to see very well. I had also taken them through a window. I waited till late afternoon, and then I went outside to get some better photos. See? Now you can see the blue I was talking about:

You can see how it was woven through the nest, and some comes out the bottom:

You know what it was? It was ribbon! Ribbon for wrapping packages. The kind with the ridges on it so you can curl it with a scissors. If you click on these last two photos to enlarge them, you can see the ridges.

There were also some bits of blue and orange twine woven through the nest. Pretty fancy decorating, I'd say! I wonder where they got the ribbon. Off a balloon, perhaps?

As I've been writing this, the more I look at that photo at 100% size, the more I see. That nest is amazingly elaborate! I cropped that one photo down and loaded it at full size below. Click on it to enlarge it and see all the details. It's amazing!

I can't even tell what it's made of. It looks like a lot of man-made materials, not grasses or anything. There are even some green strips of 'something' holding it to the branch. Wow!

I sure would like to see them build one sometime, but of course when they do it, it's all behind the cover of leaves. I rarely know the nests are there until the leaves fall off the trees.