Nature Scenes with Lynn Bowen: Birds build amazing variety of nests

BEACON PHOTO/LYNN BOWEN
The message box by my neighbor's front door was a Carolina wren's choice of where to build a nest!

By Lynn Bowen
BEACON COLUMNIST

posted Jun 26, 2009 - 1:09:26pm

Take a quick flight around Florida with me to see birds' nests. Nests are not homes, but are temporary "cribs" for holding eggs and young chicks.

Now note that the tiny hummingbirds get an A+ on their teacup-size nests that are only 1.5 inches in diameter on the inside. Only one or two tiny jelly-bean-sized eggs are laid in the tightly woven nest!

Gorgeous great egrets probably deserve only a C- on their sloppy platform-nest construction. Spectators hope that an egg won't slip through a gap in the haphazardly laid twigs and branches.

Bald eagles build huge nests, and add to them each year. The average bowl-shaped nest is 5 feet across and 5 feet deep. The largest one found in the U.S. was 10 feet wide and 20 feet deep, and weighed approximately 2 tons!

Oh my, did you notice that owls do not build a nest at all and just lay their eggs on grass and feathers in a tree cavity or in an abandoned nest from a different species?

Black vultures don't bother with nests either! They just lay eggs on the ground in wooded areas. But the chicks hatch and grow just fine in this odd lifestyle.

Unique killdeers usually lay their eggs, which look like little round gray rocks, in gravel roads or sand dunes, and then worry that the eggs will get trampled or eaten by an animal. What a curious instinct to not have a nest! They have the famous "broken-wing act" to lure people or wildlife away if the eggs are in danger.

Did you see that crafty brown-headed cowbird lay an egg in a songbird's nest? When it hatches, the little mother of the songbird may very well give all the food to her "big baby," thus unknowingly starving her own brood.

Were you amazed to see and learn about some of the different kinds of nests and "non-nests" that our wonderful feathered friends construct?

— Bowen lives in DeLand. Send e-mail to abowen27@cfl.rr.com.

— abowen27@cfl.rr.com.

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