Uphilldowndale

Watching nature take its course, from the top of a hill in northern England

Downy nest down

by 3 Comments

Spud the dog and I found a nest today, a crushed cornucopia, a squashed tricorn hat, with an extravagant plume of horse hair. Mosses, lichens, feathers and webs, felted into a snug bivi bag of a home.

nest

The fact we found iton the ground suggest its not a story with a happy ending.

nest 2

We found it under the apple tree, near the conifer. I think its the nest of long tailed tits, one of my favourite birds. I’m guessing a magpie had something to do with its demise

nest down

Author: uphilldowndale

Watching the rhythm of rural life, from the top of a hill in northern England. Having spent most of my life avoiding writing, I now need to do it! I am no domestic goddess, but if I were expecting visitors to my home, I would whisk round with the duster and plump up the cushions and generally make the place look presentable. I hope that by putting my words where others may see them it will encourage me to ‘tidy up and push the Hoover around’ my writing. On the other hand I may just be adding to the compost heap. Only time will tell! Pull up a chair, sit yourself down, I’ll put the kettle on.

3 thoughts on “Downy nest down”

Leave a comment

  1. tootlepedal
    May 8, 2019 at 11:15 pm

    Sad. I am happy that we don’t have many magpies in our neighbourhood.

    Reply
  2. shoreacres
    May 9, 2019 at 4:21 am

    I have a few nests I’ve collected after windstorms. I don’t mind finding the empty ones quite so much, but once there was a very sad ending for some babies. It’s hard to watch, sometimes, but it is the way of the natural world.

    Reply
  3. Flighty
    May 9, 2019 at 12:49 pm

    What a shame it ended up like that. xx

    Reply

Come on, join in.

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s