Build

Note: The italicised section was borrowed from a Google Gemini question.

I was watching outside my window at something in the trees.

Every morning, I wake to hear the dawn chorus. It is my free wake-up call for nature, before traffic starts to flood the road with cars and buses filled with people on their way to work, but I don't have to join in that particular rat race.

I have the pleasure of doing what I want and watching others do what they want.

Trees fascinate me. They take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen so that we can breathe clean air. They also drink the rainwater and keep our gardens and fields from flooding. I see so many woods cleared and then when the trees are gone, the flooding starts, because there are no trees to drain that water.

And they grow, and grow, from roots to trunk to branches and then become homes to nature's creatures.

Sometimes I see birds stealing branches and other bits, and then I look up at the trees and see what they are starting to create. It is fascinating how they create these living areas with only their beaks, wings, claws, intelligence, and inventiveness.

If you take a walk and look up, you will always see the work of birds, some being more impressive than others.

These works, which are to become homes for families, start with a single twig or piece, to start, and then other materials are added to create a strong place to keep eggs safe to hatch and eventually grow.

One day, there is nothing in the branches of the tree or bush, and slowly the next takes shape. Some are small, and some are large, depending on who the constructor is.

They are constructed using materials like twigs, grass, mud, feathers, and spider silk, meticulously arranged using beaks and feet to provide protection, warmth, and insulation for eggs and young. Birds instinctively weave, layer, or shape these materials—often into a cup shape—with some species using mud for structural integrity.

I have seen birds taking hair from horses and dogs to add to their constructive enterprises. I don't know what the dogs and horses thought of that.

I don't think it happens, but in the Orient. they have bird's nest soup, though I have never tried it.

So every time I see a bitd holding a twig or some other construction material in its beak, I know that this is the start of something. What that something is can be many things, but the start is the building of the nest, which becomes another start for an avian family, and I am lucky enough to see these things from my window.

From that sight, my mind starts to build the story of what is going to happen.

Then I think is the thing that is starting the building of a nest, or the start of a new avian generation that will one day be part of a murmuration of birds to astound everyone that sees it.

Or, is this the start of me becoming a birdwatcher? That, I don't think is going to happen.

Seeing a bird with a twig in its beak shows me that something is definitely beginning that will manifest itself in one natural form or another in the coming days, weeks and months. I don't know which birds have built which nests, but they do catch my attention and fascinate me.

I saw a bush full of birds, so we have the builders and materials all together, who knows what might come from this?