I spy, with my little round eye, something hairy and dangly...

That sounds like something either naughty or creepy and it was neither, instead it is adorable and I wonder if it is a hummingbird nest?

I was captivated this fall with the hummingbirds I had at my feeders, I spent a lot of time on the patio watching their aerial antics.

Last night was going out to shut up the chickens and something high up in the locust tree caught my attention, I could tell it was made out of horse tail hair and it was dangling from a branch. Too high to reach with the ladder but today Bruce brought the loader over to split wood for the stove. After we unloaded it into the garage I directed him to the tree and hopped into the bucket.

"Going up!"

It was higher than the loader would reach but I managed to pull down the branch and then snag the tiny nest that had fallen from it's place in the tree and was hanging by a thread.

It measures 2 1/4" across on the outside and 1 3/4" on the inside, made by intricately weaving horse hair that I combed from their manes and tails. Around the outside are some grasses and even a couple of strands of the netwrap that Bruce uses when he bales hay.

I tried to compare it to some common household items, a mini beany chicken, the sewing tape measure and a magnet off the refrigerator.

Then I held it in the palm of my hand and bugged Bruce to take a picture of it while he was engrossed in the State Football championship game that he was watching on the internet because it wasn't televised. He went along with it and got this picture but when he tried to do it straight now, the camera acted up and he went back to the game.

I managed to get a photo of the inside without him and wondered if it truly was a hummingbird who made this, it had to be an awfully small bird.

When I was watching the hummingbirds, I saw a couple of juveniles that weren't too sure of themselves, could they have hatched right here in my backyard?

If someone out there is an expert on bird nests, feel free to chime in but you can bet next year I will have the feeders out early and all summer, hoping to attract more hummingbirds.

I'll also probably have a permanent crick in my neck from looking up in the trees.