“There was plastic netting woven right through the nest. I couldn’t unsee it.”

A retired teacher from the Southern Highlands noticed something most Australian backyard birdwatchers never do — and the answer turned out to be standing in her own paddock. Now, after the final shearing of their herd, she’s letting the last of them go.

Robertson, New South Wales, September. The verandah wraps right around the house, the way they built them up here in the Highlands. Robyn Hartley has a chair at the northern end, angled toward the paddock, and every morning since she finished up at the school in 2019 she has sat there with her tea and watched.

She has always noticed things other people walk straight past. Thirty-four years teaching primary school will do that. But it wasn’t until that first spring with nowhere to be and no bell to beat that she had the time to properly look.

What she saw stopped her cold.

The quiet danger your bird bath can’t fix

The birds kept coming. Willie wagtails. A pair of superb fairy-wrens that worked the same hedge every year. Silvereyes through the fruit trees. Robyn had always assumed they found what they needed out there — grass, bark, a bit of down. That’s what birds do.

But when she started watching properly, she saw something else. A wagtail carrying a length of orange baling twine. A fairy-wren with a thread of shade cloth trailing behind it. And, in the fork of the hawthorn by the gate, a nest with a strand of green fruit netting wound right through the rim of the cup.

What she read afterwards was hard to sit with. Synthetic fibres — nylon, polypropylene twine, shade cloth, netting — don’t break down inside a nest. They stay rigid. When chicks hatch and start shifting about, a thin strand can wind around a leg, a wing, a throat, and it tightens rather than loosens. Wildlife carers have a name for it: fibre entanglement. And almost no backyard birdwatcher has ever heard of it.

“I’d had a bird bath out there for fifteen years,” Robyn says. “I thought I was doing my bit. I had no idea what they were actually building with.”

The morning a wagtail landed on her alpaca — and started pulling

Don had kept a small herd on the place since 2003 — fourteen alpacas on two hectares, more hobby than business. He spent forty-odd years putting up fences across the Southern Highlands. Wire is the one material that has never run short around the shed.

That first spring of Robyn’s retirement, she watched a willie wagtail drop onto the back of one of the wethers and stay there. She assumed it was after insects. Then it lifted off with a tuft of fleece in its beak and flew straight for the hawthorn.

It came back the next morning. And the morning after that. For a fortnight.

So Don cut a heart out of an offcut of fencing mesh — freehand, about four minutes’ work — packed the hexagons full of fleece from that year’s clip and hung it on the post by the hawthorn with a length of chain. Partly as a retirement present. Mostly so the wagtails would stop climbing all over the alpacas.

It came out crooked. He never straightened it.

He used four fleeces, because that was what was sitting in the shed: dark brown off Barney, cream off one of the white girls, caramel, and the charcoal grey from the old wether the wagtails liked best. Four colours in one heart. Robyn has packed every one the same way since.

Within a fortnight it had been pulled nearly bare.

Robyn watched it happen from the verandah. Trip after trip to the fence post, each one ending in the fork of the hawthorn. By the time the nest was finished she could see it from her chair — a neat cup, grey on the outside where the spider web held it together, and lined inside with soft cream fleece off her own paddock.

Three eggs. All three hatched.

The one material birds hunt for every spring — and almost never find

Alpaca fleece is different in nearly every way that matters to a nesting bird:

• Naturally hollow fibre — alpaca fleece is hollow through the core, so it insulates far better than most materials. A nest lined with it holds warmth through a cold Highlands night, which matters enormously for eggs and newly hatched chicks.
• No lanolin, no additives — unlike sheep’s wool, alpaca fleece carries no lanolin. It is soft, clean and gentle against a chick’s skin from its first day out of the shell.
• Breaks down safely — where synthetic thread stays rigid, alpaca fleece compresses and breaks down naturally inside the nest. It doesn’t hold a loop and poses no entanglement risk.
• Soft enough for lining — birds use coarse material for the outer structure and line the inside with the softest thing they can find. Alpaca fleece sits at the very top of that list, which is exactly why the wagtails go after it at the source.
• Sheds moisture — alpaca fibre repels water naturally, so the lining stays dry through spring rain rather than turning into a cold, wet mat.

“Birds don’t need any of this explained to them,” Robyn says. “The first heart we ever hung out had a wagtail on it inside the hour.”

“The neighbours started asking. Then the neighbours’ neighbours.”

Robyn made more hearts after that first spring. Don cut the frames from mesh offcuts; she packed the hexagons with the season’s fleece, four colours to a heart. One went on the post by the road. One in the old apple tree. One on the corner of the shed.

By November she had more nesting activity on the place than she had ever seen. Wagtails, fairy-wrens, a pair of eastern spinebills that had never bothered with the garden before.

Then the neighbours started noticing. Then asking. Then pulling up at the gate.

“I gave them away for five years,” Robyn laughs. “It never occurred to me to sell them. I had a paddock full of alpacas and a husband who could bend wire. It seemed like the obvious thing to do.”

It was their daughter Kate who finally put her foot down. Christmas 2024, she sat at the kitchen table with her laptop and set the shop up while Robyn was doing the pavlova. “She didn’t even tell me she was doing it,” Robyn says. “She just turned the screen around when it was finished.”

“I’d rather it went to the birds than into a skip.”

Robyn and Don are moving after Christmas — down to the coast, closer to Kate and the grandchildren at Wollongong. Two hectares has quietly become too much. The fourteen alpacas are going to a friend’s place over at Moss Vale, near enough that they can call in on them.

December’s clip was the last one. Every heart left is made from that fleece. When they are gone, there won’t be more — there is no next season to make them from.

“People ask whether I’m sad about it,” Robyn says. “I’m not. The next part is starting. I just wanted the last of them to go to people who’ll actually hang them out.”

This is what customers said about it.

Robyn’s Alpaca Nesting Heart

Hand-cut wire-mesh frame · Four undyed fleece colours · Refillable · Hangs from a chain

From the final shearing of the Hartley herd · Limited quantity · Ships from New South Wales

* This is a sponsored story. Product available while stocks last. All alpaca fleece is from the Hartley family herd at Robertson, NSW.