Nature Note #136: A Wood Duck in Winter
After dealing with the piles of snow that have graced New England the past fortnight, my girlfriend Alison and I went to check out two Mass Audubon sanctuaries south of Boston. We first toured the Sharon Beals exhibit at the Museum of American Bird Art in Canton, where the exhibit featured the photographers portraits of birds nests from all over the world. We looked at each of the nests lining the walls of the art gallery as they portrayed the many ways birds build nests ranging from the neat weavings of sparrows and thrushes, to the simple depressions of shorebirds, and then to the macabre stick and bone nest of the House Wren ( Troglodytes aedon ). This sometimes horrid, little songbird has the nasty habit of taking over the nests of other songbirds and will even pierce the eggs and kill the chicks inside to secure the nest site for themselves. The nest in the photograph, set on black to show the subtle details that had gone into each nest, was lined with the dessicated remains of th...