life on the ground

Squirrel’s nest

5 Comments on Squirrel’s nest

Yesterday, I stood on my porch and looked across the street at a squirrel’s nest in the leaping-buffalo tree.

squirrelnest.gif

The nest is way up in the air. I’m not good at judging distances, but it’s probably 50 feet off the earth. So, I’m looking at this nest and wondering how the squirrels build these things. Do they haul twigs up from the ground? Do they break off twigs from nearby branches?

Because, think about it, what would happen if we tried to build a nest up there? We’d carry a twig in our mouth, I assume that’s what squirrels do, and we’d wedge the twig into branches of the tree.

And we’d smile.

Then we’d watch our carefully-placed twig fall 50 feet to the ground. Damn.

We’d run down to the ground, find another twig, run back up to the spot and try again.

Then we’d feel a gust of wind.

Damn.

5 Comments

  1. Nature’s little engineers! At least they are no longer in your eaves.

    I’m amazed at the nest-building craft of the Baltimore Oriole. Dangling, basket-weave nests defy logic, and gravity.

  2. Oh, there are plenty of squirrels to go around! These are the across-the-street squirrels in the tree. A different set terrorizes our house.

    What happened to your finch family, Roger? Did they hang around for the winter?

  3. I think they are in the neighborhood. I’ve seen some house finches through the winter. I will not have the hanging bowl this year though. They may use another in the corner of my porch, non-hanging.

  4. When we lived in Calif, I could see the garage roof from my computer chair. One time I sat and watched a dove “build” a nest. She flew down and got a little twig. She placed it carefully on the roof. She turned her back to it and laid an egg! The egg rolled off the roof, leaving the twig.

    The dove turned around to look at it, and it was gone. She walked all over the roof, looking for her little egg, poor thing. Finally, after a few minutes of checking out the roof, she did something that amazed me. She walked to the edge of the roof, and peered down!

    Now, she was stupid enough to build a nest of one twig on a steep incline, yet smart enough to finally go look over the edge.

    She then flew away. I hope she acquired better nest building skills after that. Poor bird!

    Janet

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