Kindred Spirit

A couple of weeks ago I began to notice a phoebe spending a lot of time on our front porch. She would sit on the railing looking up at the house for a while, hop to another point in the railing and look, and then fly away only to return later in the day and do the same thing.  Sometimes she would fly up to the top corner of our front window where a phoebe had built a nest years ago and sit there for a couple of seconds. This went on for days. She began to remind me of myself standing in front of my working wall, trying to make a decision, and then walking away and coming back a few hours or a day later.

Finally, just as we had moved the table out to the porch where we eat many of our meals in the summertime, we noticed that she had made her decision.

It's just a little pile of mud and twig bits right now. But she has continued to work and was not too disturbed by having to share the porch with us now and then.

I find something quilt-like about this nest.  It certainly seems to take on the aspect of fiber since she is weaving lots of found materials together, although I doubt the requisite three layers could be found. And could it qualify as art since she is certainly making decisions about the kind of materials she is adding and the placement of those materials?

She is possibly a truer artist than any of us because she is creating something to satisfy a need deep within her and she truly does not care a mosquito's eyelash what another bird or another creature with a bigger brain than hers says about what she is doing. The nest is still a work in progress and, as you can see, her work, like mine, can generate a bit of a mess. 

I am just hoping that she and whoever else might occupy that nest will eat lots of the many bugs that survived the poor excuse for winter we had this year.

And, if you are still with me, thanks for the company!