Nested

It's one of the season's preferred activities after the leaves tumble down - a search through the woods for the abandoned nurseries of this year's wild fledgelings. The fierce winds of this week have scoured the leaves off most of the trees on the Two Hundred Acre Wood except for the stalwart oaks, and every trail is ankle deep in frost rimed leaves. Spencer and I went crunching along the trail into the woods, and every step generated a crackling fragrant music - it was an orchestration composed of of bark and leaves, acorns, oak tannin and woodland herbs gone to seed, everything falling slowly into the timeless fund of wildness, hibernation and eventual rebirth.

This was our first nest find of this autumn, a vireo's nest, and it was beguiling that the wind had lifted away the bottom of the nest rather than simply shredding the entire structure and spreading it out on the forest floor below. The vireo is a master nest builder, and our find was lovely to behold, bits of birch bark, leaves and grasses, cottonwood fluff and wild grapevine, all knitted up elegantly with strands of spider web.

Standing directly underneath, we looked up and through, into the trees, beyond the trees and way up into the chilly blue sky.