Home Diseases and pests Interesting bird nests. The most unusual nests. Facts about bird nests

Diseases and pests

Interesting bird nests. The most unusual nests. Facts about bird nests

Bird nests facilitate the warming of eggs, provide protection for masonry, incubating birds and chicks from adverse weather conditions and predators. Nest building in birds is an extremely complex phenomenon. Birds build a nest to lay their eggs and raise their chicks. However, there are birds that do not make nests, and others do not raise chicks in it, since they leave it immediately after hatching from eggs. Most birds nest once a year, many nest twice or more. Migratory birds do not nest during the winter.

Bird nests are very diverse in their location, shape and building materials used for their construction. The easiest nesting method is observed in nightjars, which lay their eggs directly on the ground without even making a hole. Razorbills and other small auks nest in rock crevices without constructing special nests. A number of birds - river and small terns, some sandpipers - dig a hole for the nest, but do not pave it with anything; in other waders, gadflies, bustards, cranes and many other birds, such a hole has a more or less pronounced lining. Passerines that nest on the ground make a real nest in the hole, and the rattlesnake also makes a kind of “roof” over the nest, which due to this has a side entrance. On the ground nests are similar in structure to the floating nests of birds such as grebes, loons and marsh terns. These nests float in fairly deep water among vegetation and support the weight of the egg-laying and incubating birds. The structure of nests of birds that nest on trees and shrubs is much more complicated. But even here there are all transitions from a simple bunch of twigs (pigeon) to the most complex nests, among which there are twisted nests of a chaffinch and a green chaff, spherical nests with a lateral course of a long-tailed tit and a wren, hanging nests of an oriole and a common shag.

Some of the most skillfully woven nests are built by many weavers. For instance, an ordinary social weaver creates group nests when there are up to 200-400 individual nesting chambers under a single roof. Usually they are supported by trees, but in South Africa, weavers willingly use power poles.Many birds nest in closed places. Many passerines, hoopoes, coraciiformes, woodpeckers, owls, parrots, some pigeons, etc. build nests in hollows. Woodpeckers themselves hollow hollows for nests, other birds use natural or left by woodpeckers hollows. many birds swallows nest in crevices of rocks or in houses (swifts, etc.), many swifts build nests from moistened soil, and salangans - from lumps of saliva that quickly hardens in air. South American stovepipers make huge globular clay nests on the roots of mangrove trees. Some birds - sand martins, kingfishers, bee-eaters - dig burrows in cliffs with soft soil with a nesting chamber at the end of their run.

Some of the weed chickens do not incubate their eggs, but bury them in the ground or in a pile of humus, where they develop due to the heat of the sun or the heat generated by rotting plants. The nest functions as an incubator for 6-9 months. Some species of weed chickens living in areas of active volcanoes bury their eggs in the warm soil on their slopes.In many hornbills, after the female lays her eggs, the male closes up the hole in the hollow with the nest with clay, leaving only a narrow gap through which the beak of the “captive” passes. The female incubates the eggs and continues to stay in the hollow for several weeks after the chicks hatch.

The vast majority of bird species have developed nesting conservatism: after successful nesting, the next year the birds return to their nesting site or restore their old nest or build a new one somewhere nearby.

Each forest bird chooses a specific place to build a nest. Some build it directly on the forest floor, on grass or earth, others on bushes or small trees, and others climb into hollows or higher into the crown of trees. Chicken birds, such as black grouse, hazel grouse, capercaillie nest exclusively on the ground. Woodcocks, forest waders, nightjars, warblers, nightingales and a number of other songbirds also build nests there.

The hazel grouse tries to locate its nest in heavily cluttered and impassable parts of the forest, chooses a small depression, slightly lined with blades of grass and dry leaves - that's the place for future chickens. From 6 to 10 large (up to 40 mm) shiny eggs can be found in the nest. Their shell is light brown, and uneven reddish-brown spots are scattered on it, but there are eggs that are completely without spots.

Black grouse and capercaillie are looking for a place to build nests somewhere in the neighborhood of an overgrown clearing, not far from wetlands, with a burnt area or a field. It is a small depression in the ground lined with grass. The black grouse has eggs of almost the same color as the hazel grouse, only slightly larger (up to 50 mm) and their number can be from 5 to 12 pieces. in one clutch. Capercaillie has 6-9 pieces of ocher color with rare dots and spots of reddish-brown color, they are even larger than grouse (up to 60 mm).

Chiffchiffs. These birds are good at camouflaging their nests. They build them among moss, dry leaves and grass, and they always build a “roof”, so the nests take the form of a hut or a ball with a side entrance, it turns out to be a mini hotel, not a nest. The stonefly chiffchaff lines its nest with feathers, but the rattle chiffchaff does without them. The clutch of these birds usually has 5-6 testicles, they are small, light with brownish or reddish speckles.

The nest is open, but he tries to hide it under a bush or a tussock. Inside it is lined with dry blades of grass, thin twigs, horsehair or something similar. The clutch consists of small 4-6 eggs, with a light or brownish-violet shell with specks, dashes and spots, and, in different nests, the color of the eggs can vary greatly. Adult birds, in order not to show where their chicks are hidden, stay at the nest carefully, try not to fly close to it.

In common bunting, the nest is somewhat similar to the nest of a forest horse. She uses the same building materials, only she lines it with more abundant horse hair, and she looks somewhat disheveled and sloppy. There are 4-6 eggs in a clutch, about the same size as that of a horse. The main background of the shell is pale pink or light purple, on which dark curls, veins and dashes can be clearly distinguished.

In the eastern nightingale, the nest is open and well camouflaged. Outside, it is woven from last year's dry blades of grass and leaves, and the inside is lined with thin dry blades of grass. The edges of the nest are slightly raised above the ground, and merge with last year's dead wood. In the nest, you can usually find from 3 to 6 pieces, evenly colored brown-olive testicles. Of course, these are not all birds that build nests on the ground, but about them another time.

V. VISHNEVSKY, post-graduate student of the Moscow Agricultural Academy. K. A. Timiryazev. Photo of the author.

Science and life // Illustrations

It so happened that I irrevocably fell in love with the beautiful and mysterious world of birds. Their appearance, singing and ability to fly have fascinated people for centuries. The only pity is that often we forget about the beauty that is next to us.

Many collect postage stamps, postcards, and the like as children. I, driven by curiosity and excitement, decided, while still at school, to collect bird eggs. What is special about them? First of all, coloring. It is only in chickens that eggs are dull white or brownish in color. And in most wild birds they are surprisingly diverse: in the song thrush they are blue, in the corvids they are greenish with brown specks, in the green chick they are pink ... Don't you believe it? And I didn't believe it until I saw it with my own eyes.

Unfortunately, over time, these precious trophies, no matter how you hide them from sunlight in a box, fade and lose color, like plucked flowers. Moreover, if the contents of the egg are not blown out, the shell may crack and the exhibit will be damaged. In addition, there are many species of birds that, without hesitation, abandon their clutch (especially in the early stages) at the slightest human intervention. It was necessary to find a way so as not to harm the birds.

A photograph is what can preserve colors and not ruin an egg. You don't even have to touch the nest! At first, I took pictures with a "soap box" for a long time. But one day I bought a Zenith. This gave me the opportunity to collect not only eggs, but also ... whole nests! Last year I switched to a four-megapixel digital camera, however, even that is not enough for me. In the future, I want to buy something more serious. Because the moments in nature are unique, and the shots that capture them are priceless!

Linnet resourcefulness

In the bird world, red is popular. Especially if it's on the chest. Linnet is no exception. True, only the male can boast of an elegant brick-red plumage. The female, as usual, wears a nondescript brownish "dress" with longitudinal dark streaks in front. Such camouflage helps the bird to remain unnoticed when it sits in the nest.

Hemp nests can be located in the most unexpected places. I found them under the roof of sheds, on the fence, in the woodpile. Apparently, something attracts these birds to human settlements. Of course, they also make their nests in trees, usually not high from the ground, but more often in dense, low-growing shrubs.

I observed the most unexpected variant of linnet nesting on an old cherry stump in the garden. The bird found a cozy niche under a piece of burlap, hung on a stump and forming a kind of hut. Even the cats did not know that under their noses a small pichuga laid five light eggs with speckles and safely hatched chicks.

Turquoise lentils

"Did you see lentils? Did you see lentils?" asks a restless male lentil in a ruby red apron. But this is only the appearance of anxiety. In fact, he knows very well where his wife is. She quietly sits in a nest hidden in the very thick of thorns. And it is not in vain that a mosaic of small leaves of a shrub stretched out from above, above the mother hen. After all, if this cover were not there, then when the bird leaves the nest, the bright juicy turquoise colors of the eggs would immediately rush into the eyes. By the way, they are very similar in color to song thrush eggs, there are even black dots, but the size is different. Lentil eggs are slightly larger than beans, as befits a passerine "caliber" bird.

forest horse

A familiar mushroom picker told me that he stumbled upon a nest in a birch hollow: “A small bird flew right out from under my feet. I immediately understood from the description - this is a horse.

The camera is in hand, and together with the mushroom picker I go across the river to the mentioned hollow. So it is: the forest horse has built a neat nest on the slope. If you don't know where it is, you'll never notice.

I quickly took a photo of the testicles and left, so as not to test the patience of my parents once again. Two weeks later I visited: the chicks hatched. It will take about two more weeks, and the young fledglings will leave a cramped nest and hide nearby in dense grass.

Hoodie

When we walk in the park or forest, wander along the river, relax on the lawn, we don’t even suspect that we are… being watched. A person, and even more so a group of people, attracts the attention of gray crows everywhere. These birds are observing us not out of idle curiosity. They have long noticed that where people stay for a sufficiently long time, you can often find something edible, for example, the remnants of a meal in the bosom of nature.

And now let's imagine that, walking among the white-trunked birches of the May forest, we suddenly stumbled upon a skillfully hidden nest of a chaffinch. Of course, you want to take a good look at it, touch it - and now the disguise is broken. Soon we will leave, but we will be replaced by a thunderstorm of bird nests - a gray crow. It was not in vain that she kept her distance and spent an hour observing nature lovers. As a reward for patience and attentiveness, the crow will receive a glorious dinner, and the couple of finches will have to come to terms with the loss and start building a new nest.

But no matter how ruthless the robber is in relation to other people's eggs and chicks, she tries to protect her offspring from predators and builds a bowl-nest on tall branched trees. For greater strength, in addition to coarse branches, aluminum wire is often woven into the walls. A tray for warmth and softness is lined with animal hair, sometimes mixed with rags, scraps of newspapers and even polyethylene.

Exactly 21 days, like a chicken, a gray crow hatches crows. And then, out of five or six speckled green eggs, gluttonous chicks are born, and oh, how much trouble our cheat has!

White Wagtail Selection

Among the birds there is a group of hollow nesters - those who prefer to breed in hollows hollowed out by woodpeckers. There are not enough such hollows for all, so one has to be content with artificial birdhouses, titmouses and the so-called natural hollows, which are formed in place of a rotten branch.

The white wagtail nests in natural hollows. Usually she chooses an old willow with a rotted core and arranges a cozy "cup" in the shelter, in which she lays five or six grayish-white eggs with dark small specks.

The wagtail is not very picky about the choice of nesting site. I had to observe her nests in an abandoned bus, excavator, combine. The only condition is that a suitable niche should be close to a reservoir where the wagtails find food for themselves and their chicks.

Thrush colony

It is easier to fight together with ground and air predators. Fieldfare thrushes know this simple truth and build nests not far from each other: at a distance of 10-30 meters. By joint efforts, they drive away from the nesting area such a hunter to other people's eggs and chicks, like a gray crow. Loud chirping greet the fieldfare and the man who stepped into their domain. Moreover, if you get too close to the nest, the attacks cannot be avoided. Flying over the very head of the troublemaker, the thrushes throw out strategic portions of droppings (from the point of view of science, this is implausible, because birds cannot have "purposeful" peristalsis, but I have repeatedly convinced myself that thrushes, common terns and gulls are capable of this). And for a few shots of a nest with green eggs in brown spots, you have to pay with soiled clothes.

Finch

Perfectly disguises its small nest, like half of a large apple, the well-known finch. In the outer walls of its construction there are necessarily translucent ribbons of birch bark, soft stems of plants, green moss, as well as insect cocoons and cobwebs. All this perfectly merges with the grayish bark of the tree on which the nest is twisted. The finch is not a rare species, so I often managed to find its nest with a cozy tray, in which usually lay four or five yellowish or bluish eggs with large and small red-brown spots.

oatmeal nest

Not all birds build nests in trees. Bunting, for example, places its nest right on the ground, near some hummock or bush. The wicker basket is firmly fixed among the grass, and inside are pinkish eggs, as if painted by an impressionist artist. Here you have not just specks and specks on the main background, but also dark lines, commas, dashes.

Alas, it is useless to specifically look for a nest of oatmeal: it is more likely to accidentally crush it than to notice it among the grass. And I don’t have sniffer dogs, like the famous ornithologist-naturalist Yevgeny Pavlovich Spangenberg (author of the books Notes of a Naturalist, Among Nature, Encounters with Animals, etc.), who was taught to look for bird nests. It's just that somehow my younger sister and I were picking berries near a plantation of young pines, and my sister stumbled upon this nest by accident. Of course, I couldn't help but take a picture of it!

Little robber

Do you know which of our birds of prey is the smallest? No, this is not a hobby or a sparrow owl! This is a shrike. True, strictly speaking, it does not belong to the order of diurnal predators or owls. The most common among shrikes is the shrike, a representative of a large order of passerines. On his head he has a gray "helmet" with black "glasses" - the most suitable "ammunition" for a real robber. When the shrike is not hungry, he willingly stores food for the future: he will catch some mouse, decapitate it and plant it on a thorn thorn or a sharp branch of a wild pear. The shrike also likes to build a nest among thorns - it's safer that way. In a bowl woven from coarse stems and twigs, a modestly brown-colored female lays five or six grayish or brownish eggs with dark spots that form a kind of corolla at the blunt end. Not eggs, but a feast for the eyes!

Common tern

In some cases, to take a good photo, you have to climb into the water.

A couple of common terns had chosen a small island in the middle of the pond, and I had no choice but to undress and wade. Fortunately, the day was sunny - truly June. The water is warm, and not deep - waist-deep.

With a Zenith around my neck, I made it to the island. As expected, I found on it among the scraps of cattail leaves three pear-shaped eggs of a brownish-green color, merging with the general background. Dark dots and spots on the shell camouflaged them perfectly. In the meantime, my parents got worried and ... dropped "bombs" on me - litter! Immediately, two more white lumps plopped into the water. It turned out that the river gulls decided to "attack" me, but did not hit me. These are the unforgettable impressions I had about this photo trophy.

eared little head

If you happened to meet an owl somewhere in a park, near a river or in a forest, then most likely it was the most numerous long-eared owl among nocturnal predators. She does not nest herself. Most often, the eared head occupies the nest of a gray crow, magpie or birds of prey.

Already in March, the female lays from five to seven eggs, the number of which directly depends on the presence of the main prey - mouse-like rodents. There is nothing remarkable in the color of the eggs - it is white, but the shape is unusual - it resembles a barrel. The blunt and sharp ends are difficult to distinguish.

The long-eared owl incubates its eggs very persistently. Once I got to the very nest, but the bird desperately tried to stop me until the last moment: it alerted the feather ears and bulged its round eyes. It flew off the nest only when I rose to the same level with the edge of the tray! "Boo-boo!" - dropped the alarmed mother hen.

Sorokino wealth

No matter how they scold the thief magpie for her tendency to drag all sorts of shiny little things, I have never had a chance to be convinced of the correctness of this notorious feature. But every spring I find new ones or visit the old nests of white-sided robbers known to me. And I didn’t find anything amazing in any of them, except perhaps aluminum wire, which, as a building material, simply perfectly fastens a spherical pile of branches with a deep, strong tray-bowl. The magpie's nest is special - it is closed on all sides. Often hidden in dense thickets of thorns. And therefore to get to it, even if you find it, is worth a lot of effort. And the sharp thorns of the bush - be sure! - leave no scratches.

No matter how much I tried to photograph the magpie nest, I did not succeed. Either it’s impossible to climb in, or the “tent” over the bowl is so dense that there is nowhere to put the lens through, and the flash will be useless. But one day I got lucky. A secretive bird built a nest in the wilds of young willows in the middle of a swamp. And through the "window" of the "tent" nest, I managed to photograph the greenish speckled eggs. Here is another secret of nature - in full view! Forty hides not diamonds and gold chains, but the most precious thing - future chicks.

The photographs were taken in the vicinity of the village of Denisovo in the Pronsky district of the Ryazan region and in the Timiryazevsky district of Moscow, on the territory of the agricultural academy park.

Nests play an important role in the reproduction of birds. Feathers are the most skillful architects in the animal world. Their buildings are often used as dwellings by other creatures.

As soon as it got warmer, a pair of long-tailed tits set to work. These birds are one of the most skilled nest builders in Europe. Although they work from morning to night, it will take them about 18 days to complete the architectural masterpiece. In shape, the nest, woven from twigs, pieces of lichen, a certain amount of feathers, hair, cobwebs, scraps of rope, shreds of fabric, and even petals, resembles a ball or an egg. It is built at the very trunk or in the fork of a branch and is equipped with a hole in the side wall - a let-hole, and inside it is lined with feathers, soft down and hairs.

Comfort Lovers

Remez tits, relatives of the long-tailed tits, are no less skilled builders. They hang their nests on tree branches, often over water. Using dry grass and plant fluff as building materials, such as willow catkins or cattail, remez weave a structure resembling a mitten with a cut off finger.

Only the male is engaged in building a nest near Remez. First, from dry grass, firmly fastened to a branch, he weaves a kind of rope, and then at its end he makes a loop, around which he builds a bag closed on all sides with a narrow entrance. Remez chicks are born and spend their first days of life in this cozy house.

Minimalist Builders

Some birds, on the contrary, are content with unpretentious nests. Many plovers - lapwings, plovers and plovers - nest right on the ground and lay their eggs in shallow holes, sometimes barely covered with grass. Guillemots lay their eggs on bare ledges of rocks, often even slightly inclined, from which the egg, it would seem, should immediately roll down. But this does not happen due to its conical shape: the egg only rolls in a circle, but does not fall. However, the most amazing example of nesting minimalism is the white tern living in the tropics: it lays a single egg right on a tree branch - in some of its forks.

Everything will work

Most geese and ducks build nests on the ground near water. To make the nest cozier, the female usually lines it with feathers and down plucked from her chest. Eiders are especially famous for their soft and warm fluff - ducks nesting in the polar regions. People collect it from nests for sewing quilts and warm down jackets.

Many birds of prey, as well as storks, use the same nest year after year. The nest often serves eagles for several decades and reaches enormous sizes. So, the height of the bald eagle's nest can reach three meters. The plexus of large branches in the nests of storks often attract sparrows and other small birds, which easily attach their simple dwellings to them.

nesting colonies

Many birds nest in colonies. Their nests are incredibly diverse. For example, for emperor penguins, a pocket formed by a fatty fold of the abdomen serves as a nest - it covers the egg, which the male holds on webbed feet, standing in the snow and warming it with the warmth of his body.

The incubation period lasts approximately 64 days. All this time, the selfless dad does not eat anything. To lose less heat, males huddle in dense groups, taking turns taking warmer places in the middle.

Many species of weavers living in sub-Saharan Africa also nest in noisy colonies. Birds build their nests on flexible branches that are hard to reach for predators. The nest must be both strong enough to support the weight of the chicks and light enough so that the branch does not break under its weight. Weavers are brilliant at this complex engineering challenge. Building skills have to be learned: young males train on training models of nests. The technology used by weavers is a cross between weaving and weaving. Their nests look like baskets, usually skillfully woven from dry blades of grass. Weavers got their name for a reason: they really know how to “spin” thick threads from plant fibers, and in addition, knit knots, fastening these threads. As a result, the birds manage to build very strong nests - often close to each other, as, for example, in social weavers. Such a "communal" nest looks like a multi-storey building with a huge number of entrances, each of which leads to a separate nest. Sometimes such a structure weighs a whole ton!

Freemasons

Some birds build nests from damp earth or clay, such as swallows, whose nests are often seen under eaves and balconies. Using its beak like a trowel, the swallow lays down lumps of clay layer by layer, building a cup-shaped nest. The entrance located in the upper part of this cup may differ in size in different species. After drying, the nest becomes very durable. Pink flamingos build mounds of silt with a depression at the top, where the female lays her egg. Nests in flamingo colonies are so close that incubating birds can hardly move. Similar nests are built by gannets nesting on the islands. Salangan swifts, living in tropical Asia, nest in huge colonies in coastal caves. Their nests are molded from dried saliva. People eat them. Swallow's nest soup is a popular Asian dish highly valued by gourmets.

A large rocky nuthatch coats large crevices in the rocks with clay or builds a bulky nest from clay against the rock wall.

Even more impressive is the nest of the red stove bug, a small bird from the order of passeriformes living in the pampas of South America. On a thick branch of a tree, a stove-maker builds a massive nest from clay mixed with plant material, similar to an old stove. The nesting chamber is separated from the "hallway" by a partition. The nest weighs up to 5 kg, and the weight of the bird itself does not exceed 75 g.

Individual style

Nests are built by many other animals. A baby mouse weaves a round cradle of grass on the stems of cereals. For construction, she uses living leaves of neighboring plants, so her nest remains greenish and merges with the surrounding grass: it is not easy for predators to notice it.

Small rodents and rabbits make nests of grass and wool in their burrows so that newborn cubs are warmer and more comfortable.

Gorillas and chimpanzees also build nests, but not for breeding, but for recreation. When evening comes, they begin to weave massive platforms from branches and leaves on the ground or lower branches of trees. These monkeys never reuse the same nest.

Skillful architects are also found among the inhabitants of the underwater world. Some wrasses secrete a large amount of mucus, from which they construct a "sleeping bag" for themselves. In it, fish and rest at night. A wrasse hiding in such a cocoon is less visible to predators.

:-: When the first Europeans appeared in the forests of New Guinea, they thought that the tiny huts, decorated with flowers, berries and bird feathers, which they found everywhere in the forest, were being built by local children. Actually it was Nest of a local bird - a bowerbird, one of the most unusual in the world.

The male spends six months building his nest. The nest of the bowerbird is located on the ground and consists mainly of dry grass. These amazing birds are considered excellent designers because they are great at building nests, while decorating them with pebbles, shells, flowers and other items to attract the female.

:-: The most skilled nest builders are weavers. They learned not only to weave, but also to knot plant fibers and blades of grass. They can disintegrate a large palm leaf into fibers in a few minutes. The nest of weavers is built only by the male. He chooses a fork of a branch hanging down and weaves a ring on it in such a way that its lower part serves as a perch for the entire period of construction.

The weaver prefers green material because it is easy to fold and weave. This is usually green elastic grass or long fibers of palm leaves, which he plucks by hanging from them.

Holding the blade of grass with its beak by the tip, the weaver puts it between the already woven stems and braids them with it. The male often changes the direction of the weave to make it tighter.

The weaver always builds the nest in the same sequence. The finished nest has an oval shape and a horizontal long axis. The inlet is at one of its ends and faces down. The male finishes it last, after the female settles in the nest.

Having completed the nest of the correct round or elongated shape (depending on the type of weaver), the male begins to attract the female.

It hangs under the nest with its head to the hole and vigorously beats its wings, making specific sounds. If the female is attracted to this behavior, she enters the nest to inspect. A rejected nest gradually loses its attractiveness, dries up and becomes straw-colored. As a rule, after a week, no one needs such a nest, and the male leaves it or destroys it.

:-: The most durable nests are built by red stove birds. The material for the nest, which has a spherical or slightly oval shape, is clay moist soil, to which dry grass and small twigs are mixed for strength.

The nest is very heavy and is usually built on a solid base, either on a fence post or on a building. The entrance is at the bottom of the building, and the inner entrance spirals gently upward into the nesting chamber.

The construction process is very laborious and takes several months. However, every year the stove builders build a new nest. The red stove maker forages on the ground, using its strong and sharp beak to dig earthworms and insect larvae out of the soil. A sun-dried nest can only be broken with a sledgehammer.

The stovepiper is a monogamous bird. Each individual of these birds is strongly attached to a partner and lives with him all his life.

:-: Crested swifts build the most fragile nests. The nest is attached to a horizontal branch about 2 cm thick, which forms the rear wall of the nest; it is attached to the side and looks like a flat elongated semicircular cup, just large enough to fit a single egg.

The walls of the nest are very thin and delicate, no thicker than parchment. They consist of feathers, individual pieces of tree lichen and tree bark; all this is stuck together with a sticky substance, and it should be noted that in crested swifts, during the construction of nests, the salivary glands swell greatly.

The small size and fragility of the nest do not allow sitting on it: the bird sits on a branch and covers the nest and the egg in it with its belly.

The "nest" can support the weight of a single tiny testicle, and the parents sit side by side on a branch.

:-: The nests swifts-salagans are built only from saliva.

It is from these nests that the famous soup is made: when cooked, the nests look like a delicious gelatin solution.

Because salagan nests are eaten, their large colonies have become a rarity.

:-: The most modern nest was demonstrated at one of the ornithological congresses: it was crow's nest made entirely of aluminum wire.

:-: The most Spartan nest is arranged by palm swifts. The nest of a palm swift is just a small pad of plant down and feathers glued to the lower vertical surface of a hanging palm leaf.

The clutch consists of 2 eggs, which are glued to the nest with saliva. At any given moment, the bird can "incubate" only one egg, perched on the side of it and holding onto the vertical surface of the leaf with tenacious claws.

The incubating bird tenaciously holds on to the nesting platform with its fingers, and since the palm leaf hangs down, the bird is always in an upright position. Chicks hatch from eggs, like all swifts, naked, but very soon covered with protective fluff. They, like their parents before, are firmly attached to the nest, with their chest turned to the leaf and head up, and are in this position until they are completely feathered.

:- : King's nest weighing only 20 g, made of cobwebs and insulated with fluff, it keeps heat so securely that mom can leave eggs in it for a whole hour and a half.

The building turns out to be very dense and from a distance it seems only a lump of moss or tangled twigs stuck among the needles. The inside is lined with hair and feathers. When it rains, the nest absorbs 60 g of water, while remaining completely dry inside. When the chicks grow up, the nest expands according to their size.

:-: Big birds, for example eagles or storks often pass on their nests by inheritance. One of the oldest was the nest of white storks, which existed for 400 years.

It is clear that each new generation of birds in such cases repairs and renovates the nest.

As a result, the weight of the nest increases all the time.

The heaviest nest in the world was the nest of bald eagles: it weighed 2 tons. The bald eagle is a large bird of prey in the hawk family that lives in North America. It is one of the national symbols of the USA. In the first half of the 20th century, the bald eagle population declined significantly, and in 1967 it was accepted under the protection of the US federal government.