Any box will do

At the farm last weekend, I went to find the hand spreader and got a surprise. The spreader is a plastic mechanical device that helps broadcast small seeds or other granular material more quickly and evenly than doing it by hand. It has an open hopper in the top. I suppose no one had used the spreader in more than a season, because built snugly into it was a beautiful bird's nest.



It was made of pine needles, oak twigs, moss, oak flowers, horse tail hairs, and even a few tufts of what looked like cat hair. Inside was an empty, abandoned eggshell. It wasn't cracked all the way open, it just had a small-ish hole in it, so I imagine the egg was raided and whatever was inside was eaten. I like to think perhaps the nest contained other eggs that hatched and the chicks were raised successfully.