Flashback The Eagle's Nest

[Raguna]

Summer 82, 515 AV

The wind pushed through his light feathers, over and under, braiding in between his wings. His small claws hung downward, clenching and unclenching his talons in boredom. He flew easily, barely moving his wings and without much thought in the process. He glided atop the warm current of Summer that Wind Reach and the rest of Kalea was experiencing. The sky was a deep blue as high noon faded and early afternoon took over. Clouds were abundant and it was clear that rain would come soon to the mountains. He felt no pulse in his instincts though, and the puffs were more white than grey. There was still time to find shelter. Which was exactly the journey Raguna was on.

His old nest, or hole rather, was just that. A hole in the eastern ground of the volcano that is Wind Reach. He prefers to stay near the city, for easier access in his human form. Walking is so much slower than flying, Raguna wasn’t much akin to it. However he prefered higher up on the mountain where fewer animals resided. He liked the solitude that the barren land gave him. Flying down to the forest was only a minutes flight, so access to food was never an issue. Although since life was less abundant on the peak, that meant it was also harder to find shelter.

As a Hobby Falcon, Raguna’s instincts told him that rather than taking the numerous amount of effort building his own nest would take, it would be more simple to reside in a hand me down. A nest that a bird and its family had built, but by now abandoned for many reasons. Raguna and his Hobby mates find this a more useful amount of time and energy to rebuild and perfect the discarded nest rather than fully create a new one.

Yet last season had been a bit more difficult to find a new home. His old one he deemed dangerous now that Spring had sprung and more and more hunter Inartians were wandering the woods in search of game. Eventually one would stumble upon his humanly belongings and claim them for themselves. So he looked for a more remote location up the mountain. After days of searching he found numerous nests. All of them too small. Some finch nests, others squirrels. Either way there was no way Raguna himself could alter them enough to be suitable. So instead he settled for a hole in the dense ground of the mountain. He made sure the hole was abandoned and he theorized that it would probably made by a family of ferrets or rabbits for it was much too small to be anything Raguna couldn’t take on himself. Another plus was that it was actually deep enough for his great chest to be hidden inside its innards. However it did make it a little difficult to change into his human form. The human size would fit, a bit cramped in the hole, and he was able to crawl deeper to retrieve his clothes and other belongings from the hidden chest. Yet it was difficult enough that Raguna found he changed less and less as the Summer went on.

He was getting lonely so far out here. He preferred human company to other birds, mostly because animals intelligence could not compare to that of the humans. And since he was human, in a way, he had such intelligence. So he decided near Summer's end to find a new home. Hopefully it wouldn't be that hard to locate. In fact, he recalled from searching for a nest in Spring, there was a Hawk nest somewhere on the mountain. Raguna had passed it, and even tried inspecting it, before he was angrily chased away by a male Hawk protecting his mate and eggs. He did not blame the bird, he was only surviving. But he filed that location away in his mind, just in case the couple decided to move homes. It was a decent size nest up in a pine tree. He would have to figure out where to hide his belongings, but the location and nest were in a good enough area that if he had to store his chest a little walk away Raguna thought it would be a fair trade off.

[Raguna]

He flew off in the direction of the Hawk nest first. It was far enough away that he never would have made any sort of contact with the owners, and therefore not have any knowledge of the nest and its inhabitants. But close enough that Raguna would consider it on the same side of the mountain. He flew low, very few trees grew up this high on the mountainside, and so nothing was obstructing his sky. He glided mostly, in no rush at all, he seemed pretty confident about the nest, even though there was no way to know if it was empty or not.

And he shouldn’t have been so confidant about it. He approached the tree that the nest was in quietly. It was a shorter tree than some Raguna had lived in. But it was evergreen and that was a plus. Its pine needles were green and straight and they would keep good cover from the snow once it started to fall. He had to look closely into its dense branches before he spotted the nest. The Hawks had hidden it well.

When he had come close enough to the tree he circled it a couple of times, making sure he wasn’t interrupting. Although if there were any birds in the vicinity Raguna felt that they would have made their presence known, subtly or not. When he was satisfied that the tree was empty, very much so actually, there were no tiny animals scurrying about or other smaller birds chirping, he swooped down towards the nest and perched on the branch holding it. Which as he looked back is another sign of a tree with a predator in it.

He began to inspect it. During this process Raguna looked at many different factors. First off he looked to make sure the nest was actually abandoned and not that the owners were just on an errand. This was simple to find. Most birds padded their nest with soft things such as moss, pine needles and maybe cotton or other human-made items a bird could scavenge. If the nest was abandoned then normally there wouldn’t be any of these padding materials because they are small enough to have fallen out with wind and weather. With an occupied nest a bird always makes sure to either restock or re-tuck the padding back into the nest.

After a nest was deemed empty Raguna would then look to see if it was habitable and salvageable. He only had so much skill on recreating nests and if it was too broken down then he was helpless. Every nest has a fit structure, most are made with strong twigs, and for larger birds, perhaps even small branches. Most of these are slightly curved to make the circular shape and stacked on top of each other like in a log cabin. They are packed so tightly though that the nest can survive in strong winds and heavy rain. Raguna looked for nests where the structure was still in place. If a few branches needed to be replaced that wasn’t that big of a deal, but he lacked the overall skill of intertwining the branches in the first place.

If these two factors were decided to be workable then, as long as every other factor such as location were also suitable, he would start to move in. However, he noticed almost instantly after he touched down that this nest was definitely not empty. The nest was in perfect condition, no errors in the structure and the padding was very abundant. Of course, he was disappointed but there was not much he could do about it, except leave before the owner came back, angry as Raguna was would sure they would be.