Nests

Lots of homebuilding this week here on the Monterey Peninsula, land and sea.

The AquariumStanding on the deck of the Monterey Bay Aquarium this week, it felt like I was in the middle of a busy, noisy construction site for a new subdivision, hundreds of new homes being built all at once. 

But instead of lumber trucks and cement mixers coming and going, filling every lot with identical new homes, it was pelagic cormorants building nests on every available space on the lower ledges under the Aquarium’s decks that hang over the bay.  

Like new families rushing into their first homes to set up the nursery, these long thin black birds (sort of like flying unopened umbrellas) dived and tugged at the giant kelp seaweed and then flew back to the ledges, building material in their mouth, to create a birth shelter for their young.  Each year the birds build a new nest, lay eggs, feed their young yummy regurgitated fish from the rich bay waters, and watch them grow and fly away.  Until next year, when maybe the kids set up housekeeping on the next ledge and do their own building.

Cormorants on the ledge by Tyler Shewbert at http://cormorants.smiocs.com/Inspired by this sign of a vital economy (new home construction), I stopped on my way home to check out another favorite animal’s new family home.  Well, new family, but old home.  For years I’ve admired a large woodrat nest up in a big old cypress tree at Point Lobos State Reserve, another place I volunteer.  Unlike the cormorant, wood rats build one nest for the ages.  But winter storms make some spring restoration necessary and I was glad to see the nest looked good, strong and neat high in the tree. 

I didn’t approach the nest (that’s the point, ten feet up on the tree out of my range and that of other predators) but I know that inside there’s not just a newly fortified nursery for the five litters of babies that will be born there this year, but a whole range of specialized rooms – bathroom, storage room, bedroom.  I joke with school groups that I lead that the only room that’s missing is the TV room, since the reception is so bad here on the Big Sur coast, but otherwise it’s a cozy multi-roomed house.  Even though the rats, unlike the cormorants, keep the same house, their kids too, like the birds, will have to build their own new nest.  No millennials getting free rent from mom and dad.

Sometimes I ask those school kids what room in their house is their favorite, as a way of making the point that all animals, including us, want to live in a habitat which provides three things: food and safety and community/family.  Most kid’s favorite room is the kitchen, which is really all three, food, safety, family.  Bedroom is mostly safety.  (I bet these kids don’t even know what a TV room is – in their house everyone probably sits around staring at their own screen.  Not sure that’s the most nourishing or community building kind of habitat.)

A Rat’s Nest from Zulu Thoughts at http://bit.ly/1raiLSK When it comes to building materials, the rats use twigs and sticks for their large nests, building ingenious beams and joists and walls and windows, and bring in lace lichen and leaves for softer beds.  The birds use the marine equivalent of sticks and twigs, fronds from the giant kelp seaweed.  But this damp and rubbery material won’t stick together on its own – it needs some adhesive.  The cormorants use a handy local product to replicate what the cement truck brings to a building site – their own guano.  It’s much like cement, same texture and color.  And readily available, no need to go to Home Depot.

It’s interesting that for some animals home construction means just building a nursery/family room, and only in the spring, like the cormorant nest.  Then off they go for the year, finding food on the fly (literally), sleeping here and there. 

But others, like wood rats are more like us – many rooms for many functions and lots of stuff, built to last year round. (Wood rats are also known as pack rats.  In their store rooms are not just acorns but any shiny trash they can find, which they save for years.)

Obviously my life, and my home, are more like the wood rats’.  I have a strong safe house and I expend time and capital on it constantly to keep it so.  I would be lost if I had to roam most of the year without kitchen and bedroom and strong walls.  I tell myself.  Maybe all those specialized rooms and insurance bills just keep me stuck in my pack rat style existence. 

Could it be that those retirees who’ve sold their homes and travel the nation in their Winnebagos, whom I mock and scorn, are really free as a bird?  Maybe they’re the ones who know that home is really just where the heart is.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter