Why.
It’s the question that follows every birdwatcher like a curious shadow. Why here? Why now? Why that branch, that patch of grass, that muddy edge of a pond?
One spring morning, as frost still clung stubbornly to the edges of the prairie, three birds found themselves asking it at the same time.
Robin tilted her head from her perch in a trembling aspen. Below her, the ground was soft, dark, and alive with promise. Yet other Robins were using evergreens, as they migrate so soon, and the trees are not all in leaf yet, and a few robins decided to try nesting on the ground. And yet…
“Why up here?” she wondered aloud, pressing a strand of dry grass into the curve of her forming nest. She used the bend of her wing like a potter shaping clay, smoothing, pressing, building. Soon she would fetch mud—good, sticky mud, the kind that comes from worm-rich soil—and line the cup until it could cradle sky-blue eggs like secrets.
From below came a reply.
Meadowlark stood half-hidden in a clump of last year’s grass, sunlight catching the yellow of her chest like a dropped piece of sun.
“Why up there?” Meadowlark called, her voice a flute-note over the field. “The wind is stronger. The branches sway. Everyone can see you.”
Robin looked down. “Everyone can see you,” she said.
Meadowlark gave a soft chuckle. “Not really.”
She stepped into her nest—if you could call it that at first glance. It was not obvious. It was a hollow, a careful dip in the earth, roofed with woven grasses, with a narrow path leading in like a secret doorway.
“I disappear,” Meadowlark said simply. “Foxes pass by. Hawks glide overhead. But I am part of the ground. My nest is not seen—it is missed.”
Robin considered this. She glanced around her tree. The branches were still bare this early in the season, but buds were swelling. Soon, leaves would hide her.
“I choose height,” Robin said. “Later, leaves will cover me. And up here, fewer things climb. Also…” She paused, listening.
The soil below shifted faintly.
“Worms,” she said, almost dreamily. “I need them. I need the mud they leave behind. I need the trees and the ground. Without both, I cannot raise my chicks.”
A splash interrupted them.
From the edge of a nearby wetland, Duck lifted her head, droplets sliding from her feathers.
“You’re both asking the wrong question,” she said.
Robin and Meadowlark turned.
Duck stood near a patch of thick grass just above the waterline. Her nest was tucked beneath it, nearly invisible unless you knew exactly where to look.
“The question isn’t just why here,” Duck continued. “It’s what works most often.”
She nudged aside a bit of grass, revealing a shallow bowl lined with downy feathers.
“I nest on the ground,” she said, “because I must stay close to water. My ducklings will walk to it the day they hatch. I hide my nest so land predators struggle to find it. But if one does…” She shrugged in that very duck-like way.
“I lay again. And again. I try many times.”
Meadowlark nodded. “Yes. We ground-nesters take risks. But we balance them differently.”
Robin shifted on her branch. “I take fewer risks with each nest,” she said. “So I build carefully. Strongly. With mud. With structure.”
Duck smiled, if ducks can be said to smile. “Different strategies. Same goal.”
A breeze moved across the landscape—through trees, over grass, across water.
Robin looked at Meadowlark’s hidden dome.
Meadowlark looked at Robin’s rising cup.
Duck settled deeper into her camouflaged hollow.
“Why?” Robin asked again, softer now.
Meadowlark answered first. “Because the ground feeds me, and hides me.”
Duck followed. “Because water protects my young—and I can try again if it doesn’t.”
Robin touched the rim of her nest, now firm with drying mud. “Because trees, soil, and worms together give my chicks the best chance.”
And somewhere in that shared question, the answer unfolded:
Not one reason. Not one way.
But many small choices, shaped over time—by predators and weather, by food and shelter, by failure and success—until each bird carried its own answer in its bones.
Why?
Because survival writes different stories for wings that share the same sky.
Part SE 23-36-6 – Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area – 241 Township Road 362-A
Part SE 23-36-6 – SW Off-Leash Recreation Area (Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area ) – 355 Township Road 362-A
S ½ 22-36-6 Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area (West of SW OLRA) – 467 Township Road 362-A
NE 21-36-6 “George Genereux” Afforestation Area – 133 Range Road 3063
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