Empty Nest
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 5, 2015

We’d ridden halfway up the hill when I noticed a small pile of sticks by the verge. My brain registered the elliptical shape but I quickly dismissed the stick-mound as otherwise unremarkable.

“Start pedalling honey!” I shouted to the 5-year-old freewheeler on the trailer seat behind mine. Small daughter obliged by merrily pedalling backwards, creating extra drag for my screaming lungs. “Stop!” she shouted and I jammed the brakes. “What’s wrong?” I panted.

“Look,” she said, pointing back at the grassy verge. There, on our left, was the jumble of sticks. It was a large nest, shaped like a bowl.

We crouched down to inspect our discovery. A wire coat hanger served as a joist under the nest. Its grey elbows protruded like strange wings from the tangle of slender branches. Another coat hanger, this one cerulean blue, supported a finer weave of twigs laid in concentric circles towards the centre. The nest’s delicate interior was a cup the size of my hand. It was thatched with dry grasses and entwined with a single strand of white wool. A mattress of smooth brown leaves completed the soft cradle.

Threaded through the nest were two lengths of insulated wire – one red, one green – and a piece of electrical cable roughly fashioned into a round. A long strand of resin packing tape, sky-blue, completed the reinforcements. The nest was not just a feat of avian engineering. It was a work of art.

I scanned the eucalypt overhead but there was no sign of the nest’s owner, lamenting her fallen home. We inspected the verge but there were no broken shells or feathers. We biked home and returned with the car to collect our orphaned prize.

I jangled the bell at number 14. A woman wearing a toddler on her hip answered the door. “We found this on your verge,” I said, proffering the nest. “Have you noticed any birds in the tree out front?”

“No. But it does explain the bits of rubbish I’ve been finding on the lawn.”

“Please can we keep it?” blurted my five-year-old, sensing finders-keepers might not hold currency amongst grownups. “Of course,” she said, smiling. “But your job is to find out which bird it belonged to.”

The nest now sits on our hall table like a rare and peculiar crown. I often pause to admire its workmanship. I marvel at the resourcefulness of the bird who created it with just a beak and a primitive pair of opposable toes.

I search the internet for similar nests but for once, Google is lacking. I email an ornithologist who tells me that a bird in nest-building mode will press its breast against the interior to make it round. “Isn’t it a lovely idea,” he wrote, “to imprint the shape of your body on your home.”

My-mother-in law is convinced it’s the work of a bird of prey. “It’s too pretty for a crow,” she says. “A kestrel perhaps?”

I send a photo of the nest to a reader who’s a regular and enlightened correspondent.

“Intriguing all right,” he replies. “It has me beat. I’m guessing magpie, crow or chicken hawk.”

Ever since we found the nest, I’ve become a kitchen-window bird-watcher. Yesterday, I was enthralled by a pair of kookaburras sunning themselves on our side fence. We eyed each other warily as I hung out the washing. Were they studying me in my suburban wilderness or was I in theirs? I sidled inside to find my zoom lens and took their portraits. Have I turned into a bird nerd?

I now block out the noise of traffic on the highway and the din of my mind to isolate strands of bird song on the walk to school. I tune in to a silvery melody, scanning the trees for its singer.

I remember the carolling of magpies as the dawn soundtrack to my childhood. I was quite the bird watcher back then, exploring the local swamp. I never found much but it was enough: an empty broken egg or a bright green feather. “Are the birds nesting early or late this year?” Nan would ask. “Early,” I replied, still nursing my bruised ego after a swan attack. (I’ve maintained a life-long fear of long-necked birds with snapping red beaks.)

The nest has reminded me of my long ago self: a girl with two plaits and a murky bowl of wriggling tadpoles getting a heroes’ welcome on show and tell day. We kids would crowd around the latest offering from our backyard jungles: silkworms on mulberry leaves; a crowd of slater beetles packed into a matchbox; a redback spider held hostage in a jam jar.

For now, the architect of our nest remains a mystery. My money’s on a magpie, but it matters not. I’m just grateful to be a collector once again.