There have been many new things to see since our move to South America, and that's been a big part of the adventure. Practically every day we see something that lives or grows here that we haven't seen in Canada, and, bit by bit, with the aid of our guidebooks and our friends and neighbours, they're becoming familiar.
One of the first things we noticed was the Rufous Hornero, or Red Ovenbird. We spent some time in our Nature Study looking at the birds, locating their nests, and reading about them online.
We knew we had seen many nests in our neighbourhood, but once we actually set out to draw one, we realized how hard they are to find. The Ovenbirds build their nests on top of things: fenceposts, light poles, tall trees, or anything else they can find. And so we walked around the neighbourhood, looking up, carrying our notebooks and pencils. Looking, always looking.
Finally we spotted one after walking about five blocks. It was high atop a telephone pole, with the 'door' facing away from us. Here's a glimpse of each of our perspectives on what we saw:
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| Brown-Eyed Boy's |
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| My Girl's |
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| Little Man's |
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| Mine |
The Red Ovenbird builds a very unique nest, and our neighbour, knowing how much we enjoy Nature Study, sent us
this slideshow of a pair of Ovenbirds constructing a nest.
(You might need to allow a moment after the link opens to let the photos load into the slideshow. Be paitent, it won't take long!)In order to make the slideshow small enough to share on Google Docs I had to remove a couple of the slides, but I think I chose carefully enough not to have lost the flow of the process. I don't know who put together the original slideshow, but if anyone knows, I'd be pleased to hear from you so I can credit the owner of the photos.
Did you notice, at the end, the way the door is kind of angled into the nest? That's a protection against predators (and weather?), offering more security inside the nest. The whole 'plastering' process looks quite involved, and the nests are very tidy when complete. I'm not sure how long it takes to build a nest.
That day out we didn't actually see an ovenbird, but we've since seen many, and I'll let you see our drawings of them soon.
