Grace And Grief

Strange times indeed. They're marked by uncertainty, most of all, followed by a stouter appreciation of how uncertain life has been all along. What next? we ask ourselves, as we might well have asked before, if we hadn't had so much busyness to distract us. We want a dog's life. Specifically, we want to wag and bark and roll in shit without any sense of our mortality. Meanwhile, life keeps sending us bolts of grace and grief, all in the same fabric.

At the same time I've been holding my breath waiting for a friend to recover from COVID-19, I've felt nothing but honored that, purely by chance, I have a front row seat to the creation of a new batch of bushtits. Front row, hell--I'm sitting on the stage! Right in front of us we've watched over the past month as Chip and Mitzi Vinebustle have painstakingly fashioned their nest-sock out of spiderweb and moss and hustle. It was finally finished about a week ago. The flurry of activity had stopped. I thought the Vinebustles were out grocery-shopping and I got curious about their sock, so I leaned over the railing--it's only a foot away--and brought my eye next to the entry hole at the top, and Mitzi up and blasted out of there right now. Sorry! I won't do it again! Oh dear. Poor little button. I backed way off, of course. I'm thinking eggs have happened.

We know what comes next, and look forward to the day, coming up soon, when the nestlings hatch and the rest of the family is invited back and the whole sock fills up with bushtits. A jollier thing cannot be imagined.

But I'll have to keep imagining it. Because sometime in the afternoon of April 29th, something really bad happened. There is a paw-sized gash in the side of the nest sock and the bottom is ripped out. Two light brown feathers are stuck to the moss and tremble in the breeze.

It had occurred to me that the nest might be in range of a cat on our railing, and I'd had the notion to jumble chicken wire on the railing if I saw a cat stalking the Vinebustles, but I hadn't done it. The neighbor's cat noticed the peeping from the song sparrow nest under a shrub last year and dispatched them before I'd found something to fence it out. I don't know why I wasn't proactive this time around.

I have two neighbors with outdoor cats that like my garden a whole lot. It's no wonder. Everything I do there is with my birds in mind. I plant what they like, I don't clean up the things gone to seed until spring, I don't rake leaves, I maintain feeders and a nest box. My neighbors would like their cats to not kill my birds. They think--well, most that can be said is they think it's a "shame." They also think that's just a cat's nature, which is true, and they also think it's very important for their cats to be able to entertain themselves by expressing that nature. Maybe they also think it's handier for them to poop in my tomato bed rather than a litter box. I can't say.

In any case they do not want to upset me, but after all, there are lots of birds, aren't there? Cats have been around forever, and there's no shortage of birds. Right? In fact domestic cats have not been around forever, not on this continent, and birds have not evolved with them, and there is most definitely a shortage of birds. Particularly in this yard. But my neighbors have heard all that, and shrugged.

And so I want to leave any of you who still allow your cats to roam to consider at least one thing about your neighbors. Just because birds are of minor importance to you, you have no right to assume the same of me. You have no right to assume my feelings are silly or overblown. Your nonchalance about your cat has devastated me. Has stolen my sleep. And there's still a chickadee in this yard that has single-footedly kept both Dave and me emotionally afloat in the darkest of days. Don't tell me it's just a bird. You're not the authority on whom I love. It's not your territory: you have no right. You have no idea.

Chip And Mitzi Put In An Offer

Mitzi

Well, we certainly did not want to discourage Chip and Mitzi Vinebustle, the bushtits, from building a nest right spang in front of our noses. And we'd only get the one shot. In spite of the fact that it takes a month or more to knit a bushtit nest, they don't reuse them the next year, but choose a different location. The amazing thing is they totally could reuse them. The suckers are sturdy. I'm always seeing bushtit nests from previous years. They look like fluff with intention, but they make it right through the winter, and as you may recall, this is tornado country.

Not really. But it's tornado neighborhood. We had a genuine petite tornado a couple blocks away last year and it took some trees down but I'm betting the bushtit nests made it through. What makes them so durable?

The main ingredient is spider web, a.k.a. God's Own Spandex. Chip and Mitzi are in there tugging on the webbing and pulling it every which direction. Usually these nests dangle from tree branches, which means the construction crew has to hang onto the nest with their feets while they're working on it, but Chip is totally using scaffolding. We have the smartest birds! The wisteria is jangling with old beans on strings and they're hanging their nest right in amongst them.

Mitzi up top with construction-grade fluff

That was job one, for us. The beans are left over from last year's pendulous flowers and some warm evening in March they all detonate. They can take your eye out. You can hear them blow up from a block away. Unfortunately not every one has gone off yet this year. There were still three unpopped beans hanging within a foot of the Vinebustles' nest, so we clipped them off. The explosion would be sure to discourage any prospective fuzzy homeowner and that's if it doesn't blast them into the street.

It's possible that bushtits have enough equanimity to shrug off exploding wisteria beans, though. They don't mind us too much. And they're not real fussy. The Literature states that the location of the nest in a given tree "tends to be from 3 feet to 100 feet" off the ground. Tends? That's like saying your average American tends to live somewhere between sea and shining sea.

The Literature also says that the tits incorporate feathers, fur, and downy plant matter to camouflage the outside of the nest. That way nobody will notice a foot-long fuzzy sock with a bustle of bushtits flying in and out of it all day long. Because once Chip and Mitzi invite the whole family back in, there are going to be lots of bushtits, and they never stop talking, either. It'll be as quiet as a preteen slumber party. Everyone wants a turn. Let ME sit the eggs! No, let ME! MOM! It's MY turn! Pip pip pip! No fair! SCOOT OVER!

Chip on his scaffolding

Camouflage? Please. They might as well go for a snappy argyle.

The extra helper tits are referred to (in The Literature) as "supernumeraries," and yes, that is the same term used for extra nipples on people. It's a little dismissive. The implication is that you really don't need all those bushtits. They're superfluous. But bushtits never find each other superfluous. They all find each other equally swell and they're all super excited about making new ones.

So among the things I'm looking forward to here is the arrival of the Louis Tiffany drapes Mitzi has on order, and the day the sock will bulge and bop with essential birds, cozying up in the feather lining. There won't be a kid jiggling his bag of marbles who will be any happier than me.

The Wish List

I don't have a big wish list. I've got what I need, and if I don't, I won't take it personally. Still, there are things.

I want to see a woodcock. I want to watch that goof strutting with his big old eyeballs on top of his head. His eyeballs are so big his brain had to slide down the back of his neck just to fit them in, and I'm not even kidding. He's dashing. He's got rhythm. He goes PEENT. He is everything I want in a wish, except Here.

Also? I want a personal bushtit nest with personal bushtits in it. As wishes go, it's not out of line. We are butt-deep in bushtits all year. They fly plurally from one tree to the next. If they had to practice social distancing they would just die. The only time of the year you'll see just two bushtits together is when they're building a nest. The rest of the flock has to be sitting around hyperventilating until they're all invited back for the open-house. And believe it or not--they will be.

Standard number of bushtits, on suet feeder

I make a point of looking for bushtit nests when we're out walking. They're often dangling from the branches of evergreens, but I've seen them in other kinds of trees as well. That's right, dangling. They totally knit a sock. A fuzzy sock.

So the bushtits in our yard have to be nesting somewhere nearby, and every year I hope I'll spy the sock, so I can watch. My sheltering-in-place plans already included trying to spot bushtits with nesting material and figuring out where they go.

And then, on a March evening warm enough to take our beers out to the front porch, we saw it. We saw it! There are two bushtits knitting a nest in our WISTERIA! Which is like six feet away from our chairs! On the PORCH! Right the heck THERE! Right the heck IN FRONT OF US!

Day two

Oh my god oh my god. They were just casting on, but I guess it takes a month for them to finish a sock. Once they turn the heel, they're home free. I read that the male will be starting two or three nests at once and the female picks one and they finish it together, so there's some danger she'll pick a different one. But we're a week in now and I think this thing is happening. So far it doesn't look like there's any actual knitting going on. It looks like it's entirely made of individual dandelion flufflets and static cling. But there's plenty of spiderweb and moss in there too. Maybe they're just putting in the lining and they'll bring in something stouter for the siding later. I plan to see.

Just think of it: can you make a sock with your face using only spider butt juice and lint? Okay fine, but then can you pop out eggs in it and jam yourself and your teenage kids and your in-laws in there until teeny weeny bushtit babies come out? I thought not. You can't even spend that kind of time with your family on Thanksgiving. But bushtits are all of the same mind when it comes to politics. It works for them. Thanks, thanks, thanks, praise the Lord and pass the creamed aphids.

And unlike most chickadees--Marge and Studley excepted--you can tell the bushtits apart. The boy has brown eyes and the girl has yellow eyes. That's Chip up top and Mitzi to the left. We're trying to give them all the space they need (and they don't seem to need much) but we have been eavesdropping and we do know their names.

Everyone? Meet Chip and Mitzi. The Vinebustles.

And bonus woodcock from Mr. Internet: