NESTS
SPRING is the season when every male bird is in his
gayest apparel and spirits, and is gallantly and tunefully
patrolling the fence along the marches of his domestic
domain. The poet's bluebird, "shifting his light load of
song from post to post" along the fence, is really warning
the world of his homestead. In Ontario the cascades of
tinkling bobolink notes are rippling along the edges of the
fields as the black-plumed knights warily escort passers-by,
flitting ahead of them along the fences until the strangers
have moved elsewhere. In Tennessee orioles flute from
thick-branched trees. Mockingbirds shout and clown on
ridgepoles or telephone poles. Sparrows do it less
musically, but far more vociferously and belligerently.
Why all this circling of bits of woodland, meadow, or
city lawn with song? Nest-building is in progress, or mother
birds are already incubating their eggs. Gorgeous Sir
Cardinal, blazing in red and black, whistles from the tulip
tree in the yard corner, "Pretty! Pretty! Pretty! It's you!
It's you! It's you!" Thus he cheers his hard-working mate.
His flaming colors appear in muted tones in her costume, and
she flits silently to and from the bridal wreath bush in the
porch corner. There's a cardinal castle erecting there.
Don't think her old man is a lazy windbag because he sits on
the treetop and shouts. He is setting up a vocal "No
trespassing" sign.
Each mother bird has chosen her nesting site. Perhaps
she approved the one father chose when he returned in the
earlier migration. Maybe he put straws in several tempting
boxes, holes, or tree crotches, sang hopefully around them,
and waited for Her to arrive and approve. Maybe she rewarded
him with a caress. Or maybe she said he had no architectural
taste and was not supporting her in the style to which her
father accustomed her, and chose her own site. Perhaps she
accepted his gift of building material. Perhaps she raked it
out scornfully. Perhaps he brings her a straw while she
works, and tries to weave it in, only to be told that his
claws are all big toes, and as a nest weaver he is a better
orchestra leader. He cheerfully resumes singing, knowing
that soon she will be perfectly willing for him to assume
half the job of mouth-cramming when the young ones appear.
Birds are marvelously human. Anyone with keen eyes
and patience to watch can catch them in many domestic scenes
perfectly understandable in gesture and tone.
All bird life at this season centers about the nest.
The nest means life, and life calls forth all the instincts
of parenthood. A glimpse of the Creator's own fatherhood is
in these tiny, feathered bits of life. They seek homes, just
as human hearts seek "a country"-"a better country, that is,
an heavenly." As the father bird chooses a nesting site, so
our Father is preparing for us "a city." As the birds in
David's day flew into the tabernacle courtyard and nested in
the hollow corners of the altar (Psalm 84:3), so our hearts
will be at rest only in "the house of the Lord," where "the
loves and sympathies which God Himself has planted in the
soul, shall . . . find truest and sweetest exercise.
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