YOU MAY HAVE SEEN bluebirds slugging it out with tree swallows over the season’s lease on a particular nestbox, or a robin flying by with a beak-ful of grass, back and forth and back again to the same spot. Everybody’s nesting—but what’s the best nest material, and to a bird, what’s the definition of prime real estate? In Part 8 of our popular ongoing series, Ellen Blackstone of the BirdNote public-radio program teaches us about the diversity of birds’ nests, helping us understand what’s going on as we look skyward.
“Location, location, location,” says Ellen. “It’s important when people choose a place to raise a family, and every bit as important to a bird.” (This archived BirdNote show explains just how much so.)
“When we think of birds’ nests, we may picture the classic robin’s nest, a twiggy little cup formed with mud and grasses, holding a clutch of sky-blue eggs,” she adds. “But with more than 10,000 species of birds in the world, there are many, many more kinds of nests–some simpler, some far more complex.”
In the Q&A that follows, Ellen’s answers contain green links to audio files from BirdNote’s archive that you won’t want to miss. Next week, we’ll look at the nests of larger birds than those covered here. A recap of earlier stories in our series is at the bottom of the page, along with information on how to get BirdNote daily.
robins and the heroics of cup nestsQ. The most-visible nests here in the garden year in and out are the robin’s—sort of your basic model of what I think of as a nest. So let’s start there: What’s the robin’s approach?
A. Picture what the building of that “cup nest” takes: What would be the human-sized equivalent of a robin’s nest? An average robin weighs less than 3 ounces. Let’s say an
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