Creative Every Day: Paper Songbirds for Ruth

Memorial weekend, I posted a robin’s nest on our ladder. Well, they hatched. Mother & babies are doing well. And in addition to the wild turkey nest we found, we have since found an oriole’s hanging pouch nest. We’d never have seen the nest, if we hadn’t seen an adult oriole fly right to it. The photo below shows the nest’s location. I cropped the pic so that the nest is exactly dead center. Click on the photo, then look very closely to see the tiny, cream-colored ball near the end of a branch?

This was the best close-up I could get with my digital camera. It’s awful, but it’s the first oriole nest I’ve ever seen in person. The view from my binos is spectacular! I love birds, so having them raise their families practically in my face is great.

On the flip side, my friend Ruth is in the hospital right now. Not so great. While driving to their mountain cabin, her husband Sam had a heart attack. Their van overturned, Sam died & Ruth is alive but badly hurt. At first, she was heavily sedated, barely conscious, on a respirator. But just this week, she is beginning to come around. She is out of ICU, but still not allowed visitors (other than her daughters), so I am sending her some birds instead. I made them as cutouts, to be taped up as decorations for her room. She is allowed to have artwork, thank God :-)

There were 6 mailed so far: Northern cardinal, Eastern bluebird, winter wren, ruby-throated hummingbird, Baltimore oriole & American goldfinch. I know if Ruth is well enough to smile, she will love them all.

Postscript: I later glued some raffia “nesting material” to the beaks of the oriole & the wren, since those birds are nesting in our yard. I told Ruth about the nests in a card, sent with the birds.

Tags: baby robins, bird art, bird cutouts, birds, creative every day challenge, oriole nest, robin's nest, Ruth, songbirds