nests | wordsfromanneli

January 2, 2026
by wordsfromanneli 43 Comments

Crispin’s Dining Room

While pruning one of our yew trees, I reached in towards the center, groping for the branch to cut, and felt a bird’s nest, obviously left there late last spring. Hesitantly, I checked for leftover unhatched eggs or dead chicks before I would throw the nest away.

The “eggs” I found in the nest were all cracked open, but they sure looked like hazelnut shells to me.

“Aha! Crispin the Squirrel has been here. I hope he only found the nest after the baby birds had flown.” I reasoned that the hazelnuts would not have been ripe until late fall, and the baby birds would have flown in the spring, so I didn’t think too badly of Crispin for making himself at home in this new dining room of his.

“Uh-ohhh … she found my stash.”

Another cinquain – five lines with 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables in each line respectively.

Crispin

Pampered squirrel

Who enjoys my woodshed

Where I bring him cracked hazelnuts

To eat.

May 2, 2023
by wordsfromanneli 38 Comments

Three Blind Mice

“Have a look at the picture below me,” says Millie Mouse.

“Do you see the part that has been circled in black? Well that’s the end of the first raised bed in the garden, and on the corner of the ‘bed’ is a triangle of wood that holds the raised bed together but mainly it keeps the rain out of my nest.

“So along comes that woman with her long-handled claw tool and she starts cleaning house for me, pulling out all the nice weeds I had growing around my nest to keep it hidden. Finally, she took a swipe at the part under my roof and it was just too close for comfort. I was outta there!

“She was shocked to see how fast I ran. I dove under the rhubarb leaves and held my breath. I nearly died when she pulled out my nest. There lay my babies strewn on the ground like three little bird treats.

“They shivered and shook but I couldn’t help them. ‘SHE’ still held that awful long-handled claw.

“But then she dropped it and ran. I guess I was tougher than I thought, scaring her off like that.

“I should’ve known it was too good to be true. Here she came again, out of the house with a ginormous camera in her hand. She put my babies together and pushed buttons on her camera over and over and over – and all the while, my babies were shivering.

“Finally, she found some common sense – although, if it’s so common, why is it so hard to find? – and she put the babes closer together and curled the nest around them. She pushed the nest back under the corner roof and found some more dried leaf bits to put over the babies.

“I guess she’s not all bad. As soon as she was gone I scampered back home to check on the wee ones. They were so scared. And cold! No coats yet. And of course they couldn’t see where they were going because they didn’t have their eyes open yet. Talk about ‘Three Blind Mice’.

“My heart is still pounding like a snare drum, but as soon as SHE is gone, we can all have a nap and pretend it never happened. I’m so glad the kids didn’t see a thing.”

May 10, 2022
by wordsfromanneli 26 Comments

A Challenge

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago I did a post about finding a robin’s nest right next to my front door.

Here is the link in case you want to go back to it for a look. https://wordsfromanneli.com/2022/04/25/hiding-the-children/

You may also remember that there were four pretty blue eggs in it.

A few days after discovering the eggs, I peeked into the nest when the mother wasn’t on the nest and I saw that the eggs had hatched, but I couldn’t tell how many.

About ten days later, I dared to take another quick peek with my camera ready. I had to hurry before the mother came back. I didn’t want to upset her. Balancing on a few toes, I leaned into the yew tree, held the branches back with one hand and took the picture with the camera flailing around in the other hand. Hence, the challenge for you to figure out what you’re looking at.

Can you sort out how many baby robins have hatched? It helps to look for big eyes and beaks.