As many of you know, I am fascinated by nests. If this nest looks familiar, it’s because I’ve painted it several times…. isn’t it beautiful?

This last winter, as my studio was nearing completion, I noticed a nest lodged in a tree that overhangs one of the skylights.  It was way out on the end, perching there, looking like it should have fallen out long before. It looked stark out there by itself, without even the leaves of the tree to put it into context.  I thought about getting up onto the roof to look at it, but decided that it was out of my reach, a bit too high up for me to get to.  If I stood in the right spot in my studio, I could look up through the skylight and see it. 

One night, the wind picked up, and we live out here on the Northern California coast, which means that it really picked up. It was absolutely howling, all night, with driving rain.  A few times that night, I woke from the noise of the storm, and looked out my bedroom window to check on the nest, and each time was amazed to see it still hanging in there, swaying like a crazy thing on the end of that branch.  In the morning, I checked again, and it was still there.  Amazing.  By then, the wind was dying down, and I was relieved to see that the nest had survived.

Later that morning, I went out to the studio to make sure that the skylights had not leaked.  Everything was fine, and as I was leaving to go back into the house, something caught my eye. There, on one of the wet flagstones by the door was the nest, still clinging to a little section of the branch, looking for all the world like an offering.