Bird Nests in Niagara Again

NN6906 Earl Plato
Bird nests: Part Two: Think big. 5. On the northwest side trail of Stevensville Conservation Park for many years a huge nest was located. The red-tailed hawks that resided there had built a large platform-like nest high in an oak tree. How high? 35-40 feet ( 12+ metres) above the ground. Both males and females wove this big nest together with many branches. Think big - up to 75 metres across and 15 centimetres deep. No eagle nest but still a good sized nest. We read that it is lined with mosses, evergreen sprigs or the soft inner bark from cedars and yes grapevines. This nest was used by a pair of Red-tails for many years. Then a long came Great horned owls and took over the nest. No one messes with that raptor. 6. For years on the other side of Stevensville were the enormous nests of another raptor. It was the long time blue heron large congregation near Don Schneider’s property. It is called a heronry. We counted at one time over sixty nests in the woods off Bowen Road. These are huge structures made up of large branches and roughly put together in a platform. Sadly a lumbering company looking for mature trees devastated the woods. I drove by the other day and asked, “ Are there any blue herons left?” I could see no nests from Bowen Road. 7. Ernie Giles, former Fort Erie naturalist, and I were in a nature park named Tifft just on the south side of Buffalo New York. We walked the paths and on the south side where there were many ponds we saw Pied-bill grebes swimming low in the water. Ernie told me to watch one pair as they disappeared among the aquatic plants near the water’s edge. Most waterfowl build their nests close to water. Ernie said that the pied-bill grebes actually build their nets on the water. Both sexes build up an under water foundation of rotting vegetation. On top of it they spread a mass of more recent vegetation about 30 centimetres across, I was told that the nest sits just above the pond water level. What about egg hunters? Brush back the covering on the nest and there was a film of debris covering five eggs. Neat camouflage. 8. I’ve seen this bird’s nest looking down from fifty feet in the air at the Walk In The Clouds Haliburton site and at Wainfleet Marsh where I was eye to eye with this bird as she sat on her nest. I had climbed up to a deer hunter’s seat about three metres high. When I turned there was the bird It was a Red-eyed vireo that sat in her suspended nest. It was a typical cup shaped nest. The female had built her small nest 7 or 8 centimetres of grasses, small strips of bark and vine tendrils. It’s a neat nest by which she attaches the lip of the nest securely to in this case the forked branch of an alder.
One of my favourite nests is that of the Baltimore oriole (Northern oriole). It’s a pouched-shaped nest wonderfully woven and suspended from a forked branch high up in a tree. Marcy Woods has had many of these. Bird nests. There are many other types. Be curious in nature, eh.