More Bird’s Nests
Yesterday I took a brief tour of the part of my yard closest to the house. I quickly found too more bird’s nests which are still in place.
There is a large rhododendron in the front yard and I saw this clump of intertwined twigs. Structures like this do not get into tree branches by themselves.
This is the view from the other side with the camera held higher than my head. This side of the nest is open like a deck. I don’t know if that is intentional or if it has been knocked down. It looks like eggs could easily roll out of it.
I found this nest in the back yard, in the same laurel hedge where I found the other nests the day before. There are no eggs but there was a some kind of bird (sorry, I don’t know my birds) hopping around in the laurel hedge and making some noise as I photographed the nest. Maybe this is where she’s planning to lay her eggs. I hope so because this one is easy to get to. I don’t want to scare the mother away, however, or cause her to abandon her nest, especially if she hatches chicks in it.
One question I have is how do birds get mud up into their nests? I’m assuming they carry it in their mouths or they eat dirt and then regurgitate it to cement the twigs together. I guess they could also carry dirt clumps in their claws, put them in the nest and then rain would make the mud for them.
If anybody has the answer they can post it in the comments section.
I also found this interesting web page about how birds build their nests: Architects of the Air.
UPDATE 4/17/04: A reader sent me this link that provides some information about how certain species of birds use mud to build their nests.
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