Birds often build their nests in places that are inconvenient to us, but also they also offer us an opportunity to see the whole parenting process from egg to flight.
Something Wild: Birds in Odd Places
Air date: May 6, 2005
Welcome to this week?s edition of Something Wild. I?m Rosemary Conroy for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
It?s that time of year when you hear about birds nesting in odd places. Well, odd to us ? one has to assume the birds know what they?re doing.
We hear about falcons nesting on office buildings in Manchester, red-tailed hawks nesting over doorways of swanky Manhattan apartment buildings, and closer to home ? robins and finches nesting in everything from hanging flower pots to decorative door wreaths.
So what do you do if a bird sets up shop on your front porch or doorway? Well, you do have every right to take down the nest, of course, but the birds can often be quite persistent. The other solution is to see this as an educational experience. Water your plants from the bottom and use a different door if you can. It will be a temporary inconvenience at worst.
Most birds take about a week to build their remarkable little nests. Even we humans, with our clever hands, would have a hard time weaving such a durable, comfortable, and aesthetically pleasing baby basket ? and birds use just one beak and two feet.
Once the nest is built, the female lays eggs and begins incubating. For most birds, this takes about 3 weeks or so. Once the chicks hatch, the hard work begins. Most songbirds are born blind and featherless and thereby require a lot of protein to grow to fledgling stage. Parent birds typically feed their chicks every 20 minutes from dawn to dusk.
With any luck, all that hard work pays off and their well-tended offspring graduate into a well-adjusted adulthood.
They say it?s all over before you know it! But hopefully watching your foster bird family grow and take wing can be a mutually beneficial experience for all.
Something Wild is a joint production of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, New Hampshire Audubon, and NHPR.
For Something Wild, I?m Rosemary Conroy.
