Nesting in Place
By: Allaire Diamond
Tags: Parenting, Nest, Biology, Pregnancy, Birds

A phoebe nest, including mosses, grasses, and strands of the author’s daughter’s hair. Photo by Allaire Diamond

First published in the “A Place In Mind” column, Northern Woodlands Magazine, Spring 2012

Twenty-five weeks into my pregnancy, our resident porch phoebes returned. I first heard them singing on the third day of April, and soon after the pair started scoping out overhangs and corners, tails flicking. These birds have nested within a wingspan of the same spot each of the four springs we’ve lived here.

Perennially, they seem to toy with building their nest precariously wedged on a wire against a board, and this year was no exception. They perched side by side on the wire, resembling avian versions of my husband and me surveying our Civil War-era house, trying to decide which projects we should take on before welcoming our baby into it. As always, the birds seemed to decide the wire wasn’t worth the hassle. After applying a few daubs of mud to it, they changed course and began devoting all of their energy to a much more prudent spot, framed by two-by-fours in a shelf-like corner.

From a hammock swing, I watched the parents ferry bits of moss and grass from a hemlock-lined stream bank across the road. Placing their cargo on the nest, they carefully wedged it into place with their beaks. As the nest developed its characteristic cup, the phoebes helped define this shape by getting in it and wiggling around to compress the mud that bound it all together. It started to resemble a perfect impression of their bodies, ideal

for the hours and days of incubatory sitting to come.

The birds’ nesting routine seemed so thoughtful. Biologically speaking, though, it has approximately the same creative value as a reflex. A few winters back, I spent days learning to differentiate bird nests with naturalist Bernd Heinrich and several fellow graduate students. The nests we studied were both breathtakingly elegant and surprisingly formulaic. For example, most red-eyed vireos festoon their nests with bits of decorative wasp paper

whose source may be hundreds of yards away. My mind had trouble squaring these nests, so lovely and aesthetically informed they seemed borne of an inventive mind, with rote species-wide consistency. How could finding the perfect mossy bank or wasp paper stash not be a creative act? “They just do it,” Heinrich said. “It’s programmed in.”

As spring turned to summer, my own nesting behaviors kicked up. I found myself repeatedly drawn into the baby’s room. The nursery took shape as we gathered its contents from friends, family, other rooms, Craigslist expeditions — our own equivalents of wasp nests and mossy banks. I arranged and rearranged gifts of books, clothes, diapers, toys, and supplies. I sewed crib bedding and curtains from cloth panels I had printed with woodblocks showing the mountains and animals outside our door. I was wedging gifts, hand-me-downs, and wisdom that friends and relatives shared into my own nest. In the last weeks of my pregnancy, the elements of my normal life faded into the background of my mind as I prepared for the little person who would soon nestle in that space.

Was I any more thoughtful or creative than the phoebes? Since I started telling people about my pregnancy, other mothers had described their nesting rituals, fondly recalling that period of inward domesticity as a harbinger of the days and weeks before birth. My first thought on finding out I was pregnant was that my body was no longer my own, and as I found myself drawn into the spells of gnawing hunger and overwhelming tiredness common to so many pregnant women, I felt like I had aligned with a sort of ancient, pulsing wavelength of humanity. After years of operating in selfish independence — traveling, pursuing passions, earning degrees — these species-level responses made me sense something of what it meant to be responsible for another’s life.

Neither the phoebes nor I made a choice to alter our philosophies in this way, to tirelessly gather moss or fold baby clothes. Those behaviors simply took over. In a way it was a relief to realize this, to be compelled to act beyond conscious thinking. Because if this didn’t happen, how could we ever continue our respective species? Would phoebes, if they had a choice, devote their lives to building nests, incubating eggs, and bringing insects to nestlings that resembled little more than fuzzy Q-tips? If I wasn’t weighed down by my ever-protruding belly, swollen feet, and precipitous emotions, would I be so sanguine about giving up long bike rides, epic hikes, and days of quiet reading? Pregnancy made me realize the illusoriness of personal choice and the surprising satisfaction of recognizing myself as a creature of instinct. Like the phoebes, vireos, and other birds that sweep into our region on waves of nesting hormones each spring, I was experiencing the elegance and beauty of predictable behaviors and their role in making a family.

Heinrich has called love a “chemical imbalance of the brain… that causes us to maintain focus on something that carries an adaptive agenda.” Nesting — surely an act of love as well as an instinct — helps draw our focus to creating a safe environment for the next generation. It doesn’t prevent the inevitable mistakes parents make (one day, the adult phoebes crashed into each other as one left the nest while the other arrived with a bug), but it lays a softer foundation for a new phase of life.