Essay: Empty Nest
6/22/99
The chickadee on the hemlock branch outside my home office window looked as though it had just dug its way out of a snowbank. What was going on? The last chunks of dirty white were long gone from the roadsides. The bird paused a moment, then disappeared — from my mind as well as the branch, engrossed as I was in my work. But the chickadee kept coming back, each time with its head flecked with white. I realized finally the “snow” had staying power — the hemlock branch had acquired its own white rime — and had a hunch: the chickadees were excavating a nest in our foam insulation.
Outside I found that one of the holes the crew had drilled to blow in the foam had lost its plastic cap. The chickadees were retrofitting part of my office wall as a snug apartment for their future family.
The chickadees and I crossed paths frequently in the days that followed: I on the way to my greenhouse, they en route to the nest. It wasn’t long before I heard babies’ cheeps. Those sounds — or the parents’ increasingly frequent food deliveries — alerted more than me to the presence of the nest. Sitting at the computer one afternoon, I became aware of a rising chorus of staccato alarm calls — and blurs of red (cardinals), blue (indigo buntings), brown (song sparrows) and gray (titmice, nuthatches and woodpeckers) heading for the hemlock. Mobbing behavior.
I headed out the door. Though nothing seemed amiss, my appearance didn’t scatter the bird assemblage, and I settled into the hammock under the hemlock to look for the cause of alarm. The parent chickadees, beaks full of food, hopped excitedly among the branches nearest their nest hole, but wouldn’t fly in. From time to time, one flew to the eaves, about four feet above the hole, to hover and utter chinks of alarm.
Where there had been nothing, suddenly there it was: a black head, emerging from the
eaves, black tongue flicking. A sleek, sinuous body extended itself, unhurriedly and inexorably. Mesmerized, I watched as the distance shrank between black snake and black hole.
The frantic chickadee’s beating wings inches from its head was as nothing to the snake, but it instantly withdrew when I catapulted from the hammock in search of a rock or pole. No pole I could lay hands on reached even as high as the hole, much less the eaves. And I knew any rock I threw was likelier to hit the window than the snake.
I hurried inside for reinforcements. “A snake has gotten into the attic somehow and is trying to get into the chickadees’ nest,” I told P–. “Come help me.”
“A board has pulled away from the side of the house,” he said when he’d looked things over, and set off for the extension ladder and hammer. “The snake didn’t want to give up dinner,” he said. “It held its ground, even after I started hammering.”
Back in the hammock, I watched the chickadee parents work up courage to reenter the nest. Again and again, they hovered by the eaves looking for the snake, then approached the nest hole, lost heart and flew away. The babies begged loudly. Finally, one parent landed at the hole and, after several glances at the eaves, dove in to confront whatever awaited it in the dark.
Which turned out to be only hungry offspring.
Each morning after that I stopped near the nest to listen for the hungry babies. The parents, mouths full, still glanced occasionally toward the eaves. So did I. Where was the snake? Looking for an alternate route?
At my computer a few days later, I heard another commotion. Oh, no. Outside, I found the chickadee parents, beaks crammed with insects, hopping from branch to branch. The babies chirped loudly from the nest. At last, one of the adults flew to the hole and stuck its head in. A second later, mouth still full, it was back on the branch.
Something’s different about this, I thought. And it was. From the hammock I watched for 10-15 minutes before a chickadee materialized at the hole. The little bird looked exactly like the two cheering it on from the hemlock. Fluffing its feathers, it hesitated like a child on a diving board, then launched itself into the air. It flew — expertly — past its parents into the tree. A minute later, another fledgling popped up. Then two at once. One by one, each took its maiden flight.
That must be it, I thought, and peered into the hemlock to see where the babies had gone. A movement in my peripheral vision redirected my attention: another fledgling had appeared at the Empty Nest hole. This one had specks of foam stuck to it, and I remembered the day — it seemed like a million years earlier — when its foam-flecked parents had ushered in the drama now drawing to a close. Two more fledglings followed the foam-flecked one, bringing the total to seven. Was I proud!
Lots of chickadees are flitting around the treetops and emptying the suet feeder outside my office window this summer. The sight of them gladdens me. Some empty nests are cause for sorrow. Not this one.