A forked formation in a tree makes for a sturdy starting point for nest building. Bird nests can easily hide in the foliage of the nesting season. When winter arrives and the foliage falls, nests are revealed.
Tall trees and dense thickets are made up of scumbled lines of trunks and branches in varying forms and thicknesses. Among these lines, where sky and land otherwise fill in the gaps, are round masses of earthy material in an assortment of shapes and sizes. The masses pop up here and there and sometimes in unexpected places. They are nests. The winter season, with greenery having dried and fallen, reveals formerly inconspicuous homes. Nests now sit exposed and ready to be discovered.
At eye-level heights and beyond, empty bird nests can be seen. Compact, neat little baskets of bendy twigs that are held together with mud and lined with soft grasses balance on or are tied to tree limbs. Some are large. Some are small. The nests had been constructed with beaks and feet and arranged into the perfect shape to contain eggs and growing hatchlings from the last nesting season.
The tidy, bowl-shaped nests attributed to birds like robins differ from the looser, flatter nests of birds like mourning doves. I tend to find the robin-type nests in winter more often due to their sturdiness. They handle the trying weather better and experience more longevity as a result. Sparser nests tend to quickly fall apart and disappear once the birds have left. Sometimes I check on old mourning dove nests in winter. After having long been abandoned, only little collections of sticks can be seen lying sporadically on the tree branches where they had been built. Barely any trace of the nests is left in winter.
Squirrels use a number of nests throughout the year. Large leafy masses are built into a hollow shape that keeps the squirrels sheltered in the winter weather.
Even higher in trees, large tangles of leaves can be seen globed onto branches. The leafy bundles look messy, and their sturdiness looks questionable, but, despite appearances, these nests are actually very sturdy and very practical. Squirrels made them. Squirrels nest in naturally-occurring openings in trees and are also very adept at building nests, also called dreys, from scratch in treetops.
After picking out a forked branch, squirrels collect bunches of leaves and twigs and haul them to the nest site to be arranged into a hollow enclosure. This shape keeps the squirrels safe from the elements as well as from predators. Unlike birds, who use nests purely to raise their young and leave the nests behind as soon as the nesting season is over, squirrels use their nests all year—even in winter. Squirrels commonly occupy several nests within a year, abandoning some and building others. I find it interesting to see where squirrel nests appear throughout the year. A popular summer location might not make for a suitable winter abode. As is the case with all nest builders, squirrels nest in places deemed safe and near convenient food sources, and these locations can and do change, causing a squirrel to move and build a new nest whenever needed.
Wasp nests are vacant in winter, leaving the weather to freely wear away at the papery material. Abandoned wasp nests and other types of nests gradually disappear as they age and fall apart. Because there are no wasps to bother in winter, it is safe to have a closer look at these beautiful sculptures.
Winter makes another type of nest obvious. This one is a heavy blob that hangs from a tree limb as if it were a massive acorn. Its conical shape is gray and has a black spot of a hole on its side near the bottom. Wasp nests are unoccupied in winter. This is made clear due to their usually decrepit appearance. Chunks of unmaintained wasp nests fall to the ground as they age and are riddled with harsh winter elements. The nests look gnarly, but in their heyday, they were kept in mint condition.
Wasp nests are molded from top to bottom. The wasps collect woody plant material in their mouths and bring it back to the nest site where they spit the material out and sculpt their papery home into shape. While wasp nests can be spotted during other seasons, the lack of occupants in winter allows one to safely admire the nests up close. These nests really catch my attention, especially in winter when I know that I would not bother any residents should I take a closer look. Despite additional holes and peeling layers of paper that resemble delicate layers of a flaky pastry, a surface covered in scalloped waves can still be seen on a nest. I cannot see past the black entrance, but I know that the inside holds horizontal levels covered in cells that had been used to store food and raise young wasps in what had been a growing colony many months ago.
Bird, squirrel, and wasp nests can, of course, be seen during other times of the year. But a winter landscape showcases these nests in such a way that allows one to admire the nests in a more accessible and safer setting. Winter nests also come with histories, whether known or unknown. Who lived in them? Were the nests successful? Where are the nest builders and occupants now? The state of vacancy of some winter nests allows one to venture closer to their woven and plastered constructions, and the nests offer room for memories or imagined stories about the days in which they were in use.
The winter nest reveal is, however, seldom complete and certain. I was passing through a wooded area one winter day with an expectation of finding a few bird nests that I had seen about a week earlier. I found none. Not even winter reveals all of its nests or keeps them on display for long. So many fall apart or blow away. Some simply remain hidden. And not all nests are exposed and held up by tree branches; many are located deep underground, just under leaf litter, and snug under the wood of decaying logs, perpetually invisible to humans. Some nests go completely undiscovered, and those who live or lived in those nests would likely be proud of that accomplishment.