“I found a young oriole hanging by one leg in orange baling twine. I cut him loose with my mail scissors, and I’ve made these hearts ever since.” — Why a 69-year-old former mail carrier from Nova Scotia is letting her last alpaca nesting hearts go at a special price, before the birds come back in the spring.

Every March, before the snow is gone, Joyce Pettigrew walks down her driveway with a bag of alpaca wool. At the end of the lane stands her old mailbox. The door is rusted shut. On the post hangs a small wire heart.

She fills the heart with wool, a little at a time. Dark brown, cream, caramel, grey. Then she walks back to the house and waits for the birds.

Joyce is 69. She lives on an old apple orchard near Canning, in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, with a view of Cape Blomidon and eleven alpacas in the field behind the barn. For 33 years she drove a rural mail route for Canada Post. 168 kilometres a day. 412 mailboxes.

“Thirty-three years I filled other people’s boxes. Now I fill one for the birds. Best route I ever had.”

The bird in the orange twine

It was June 2017, her last summer on the route. At a mailbox near Habitat, something orange was moving on the post. Someone had tied baling twine around it. Caught in the twine, by one leg, was a young Baltimore oriole.

Joyce kept a pair of scissors in the car for the elastic bands on the mail bundles. She cut the twine. The bird sat on her glove for a second. Then it flew up into the elm.

Up in that elm hung the oriole’s nest. Joyce could barely see any grass in it. It was orange baling twine, blue string, a strip of white plastic and a piece of fishing line, woven into a pouch. The same twine that had caught the young bird.

“Thirty-three years I carried those scissors for elastic bands. That was the only time they really mattered.”

Birds can’t tell string from grass. Orioles weave whatever they find into their nests, and that includes twine and fishing line. Wool and hair are different. They pull apart.

The crate in the barn: 27 nests full of plastic

In 33 years on the route, Joyce saw a lot of nests. Robins built on top of mailboxes. Wrens squeezed into the ones with a broken door. Every spring she left a few boxes alone until the young birds had flown.

Over the years, the nests changed. In the 1980s they were grass, moss and horsehair. Later, more and more of them had orange and blue baling twine in them. Strips of white plastic bale wrap. Pieces of grocery bags. Fishing line from the river.

When a nest was empty in the fall, she took it home. Today there are 27 of them in an old apple crate in her barn. She has never thrown one away.

“I don’t keep them because they’re pretty. I keep them so I don’t forget.”

Why the birds take the plastic

Every round bale of hay in the Valley is tied with twine and wrapped in plastic. Torn pieces end up on fences, in ditches and on mailbox posts. To a bird, a loose strand looks just like dry grass. It is long, it is soft at the ends, and it is right there.

But twine does not break. A tuft of wool comes apart when a small foot pulls on it. A strand of plastic twine just holds on. Joyce has seen what that means more than once.

“Every one of those birds did its best with what was lying around. That’s the part that gets me.”

A sparrow, a fence, and a whole morning

One year later, after the alpacas were sheared, little tufts of wool hung on the fence where the animals like to rub. Joyce stood at the kitchen window with her tea. A chipping sparrow was tugging at the wire.

It flew off with a tuft of cream wool, into the old Gravenstein apple tree. Then it came back. And again. All morning long.

Chipping sparrows have an old nickname: the hairbird. They line their nests with animal hair. Long ago it was horsehair. Today it is whatever they can find.

Joyce thought of the orange twine. That afternoon she bent a heart out of leftover chicken wire, filled it with wool and hung it on her old mailbox post. Two weeks later there was a new nest in the Gravenstein. Inside, it was soft and cream-white.

“I never planned to make anything. The sparrow decided. I just watched.”

The red barn where every heart is packed like the mail

Her workshop is the red barn where the farm once packed apples. The long wooden table is still there. In winter, the wood stove crackles. It smells of hay and wool.

Joyce sorts the wool into four piles, one for each colour. Then she pulls every tuft apart by hand until it is short and loose. She fills the heart one colour at a time, always in the same order. Thirty-three years of sorting mail will do that to a person.

One heart takes her about 45 minutes. For seven years she gave every one away: to neighbours, to her church, to the garden club in Wolfville. She never sold a single one.

What eight springs taught her about nesting wool

Joyce has watched birds at her heart for eight springs. She has learned what they need, and what they leave behind.

• “The Short-Staple Rule”: Joyce pulls every tuft short by hand. No long strands, nothing a bird could wrap around a leg or a wing. “If it’s longer than my finger, it doesn’t go in,” she says. “I saw what long string does.”
• “The Four-Colour Undyed Fibre”: Raw alpaca wool in four natural colours: dark brown, cream, caramel and grey. Never dyed, never treated. Nothing goes into the nest that didn’t grow on an alpaca in her field.
• “The Hex-Mesh Pull Gauge”: The six-sided wire mesh lets a bird pull out one small tuft at a time. The rest stays inside, even in the wind off the Bay of Fundy and the April rain.
• “The Mailbox-Post Hang”: A short chain with a ring. It hangs from a post, a branch or a fence at eye level, where you can watch from the window. Each spring you simply fill it again, the way Joyce does at her mailbox.

The morning her thumbs said no

What Joyce will miss most are the winter mornings in the barn. Snow piled against the window. The stove ticking. The four piles of wool. A finished heart in her hands, ready for the post.

But 33 years of gripping mail bundles left their mark. She has arthritis in both thumbs. Pulling the wool apart and pushing it through the small wire holes is all thumb work. She used to fill eight hearts a day. Now she manages two.

“I can still feed the alpacas. I can still drive. But pinching wool? That’s all thumb. And the thumbs are done.”

The alpacas stay. But from next year, their wool goes to a spinning mill. 212 hearts are left from this June’s shearing. After that, there will be no more.

“I didn’t cut that oriole loose to make money off the next one”

The spinning mill would pay Joyce more for the wool than these hearts will bring. She knows that. She doesn’t care.

She wants her last hearts on fence posts and apple trees across Canada this spring. She wants more nests lined with soft wool, and fewer with orange twine.

“I didn’t cut that oriole loose so I could make money off the next one.”

Joyce doesn’t sell online. Her grandson Owen, 22, a student at Acadia University in Wolfville, took photos of the heart on her mailbox and set up the page where you can order now. Joyce still packs every box herself at the long table in the barn.

“Owen said people in Ontario wanted one. I told him Ontario has its own sheep.”

What bird lovers say about Joyce’s hearts

• ★★★★★

  “I hung it on the clothesline pole in March. By the end of April the chickadees had pulled out half the cream wool. Found a nest in the birch with the same colour inside.”

  Donna M., Truro, NS
• ★★★★★

  “Bought two for my mother for Christmas. She’s 88 and watches the feeder all day. She says the heart is the best seat in the house now.”

  Sharon T., Guelph, ON
• ★★★★★

  “Really nice wool, soft and clean, four colours like she says. Came with a little handwritten card from Joyce. I’ll be refilling mine every spring.”

  Brenda K., Moncton, NB

Three questions people ask before ordering

Where can I buy one of Joyce’s alpaca hearts?

Only through this page. Joyce’s hearts are not sold on Amazon, Temu or in any store.

How long will they be available?

Only while supplies last. There are 212 hearts left from the June shearing. After that, the wool goes to the mill, and there will be no more.

What if it’s not right for me?

You have 30 days to try it at home. If you are not happy, just send a short email and you will get your money back. No questions, no hassle.

More from people who hung one up

• ★★★★★

  “We had orioles for the first time in years. I watched the female pull wool for three days straight. The heart was nearly empty by June.”

  Gail R., Kingston, ON
• ★★★★★

  “Sturdy wire, good chain, and the wool doesn’t blow away in the wind. We get a lot of wind here. It held up all spring.”

  Ken P., Charlottetown, PE
• ★★★★★

  “A perfect gift for the gardener who has everything. My sister put it up outside her kitchen window and sends me bird photos every morning.”

  Lorraine B., Red Deer, AB