The Craftiest Workshop

A month from now there will be tasks like dethatching, preparing the ground for planting and cleaning up animal poop from winter. Up till now, I have been concentrating on spending time in the bush while there is no water or bugs.

The last few weeks with the near 0° temperatures, I have been out for hours at a time trimming trees and piling dead branches before the spring thaw. Once the snow turns to water, we may have a few weeks where the treed area is under a foot of water. I noticed, that in the last few days, the trees are starting to bud so I am all done trimming until fall.

While out trimming I stumbled across a few bird’s nests from last year.

This tiny nest is perched precariously on just a few rose hips branches just behind our fire pit. It is in an odd location because the bird feeder is there and those rose hips have extremely painful stems. I am curious which bird was living there.

There were a few of these larger nests perched high in the trees. One was built almost like a tumbleweed, it was pretty much fully round. I imagine the ravens, the hawks we had around last summer or the owl visitor from the fall may have used these nests.

My favourite discovery was in one of taller dead stumps on the property. One of the woodpeckers had drilled out a cavity in the side of it and a bird built a nest inside.

I suppose it could have been a Downy Woodpecker nest, as they are about the right size, but I suspect it was a Robin’s nest. I decided to take all the other Robin’s nests from last spring and remove them from where they had been built.

Robin’s will always build a new nest and obviously they liked the locations so now they can rebuild there if they like. Last year they built in the lean-to shed in the rafters, on the camping trailer wheel, under the birdhouse on the firepit wall and in the wood pile.

We currently only have the one birdhouse so I pried off the roof and dumped it out. Aside from the many twigs, I found a few pinecones and sunflowers seeds that the squirrel had shoved in there hoping to retrieve them at a later date.

I cleaned out the birdhouse with some water and a toothbrush. After it dried, I replaced the lid using screws to make it easier to remove the roof next spring.

Finding the bird’s nests reminded me of the beautiful wasp nest we found last fall hanging from one of the lower branches on a tree. I went to look for it but either the fall winds or the snow had mangled it to pieces.

Soon I will hang up my snowshoes and start using rubber boots as our snowy ground turns to water and mud.
Does anyone reading this know if they make splash pants for adults?