Early spring, earlier nesting birds

Did spring arrive early this year? Some people think so. Apparently, some birds do, too. The NestWatch project at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology documents when and where birds are nesting.

Asian fishing cats caught snacking on chicks from tree-top nests

South Asian fishing cats were observed raiding bird nests in tall trees for the first time. This rare and highly unusual behavior was caught on motion cameras set up in tree canopies across northeast Bangladesh to survey ...

Conservation detection dogs sniff out rare curlew nests

Once an iconic native bird ubiquitous to the Irish landscape, Europe's largest wading bird, the curlew, is now threatened with extinction and disappearing from the Irish countryside. Over the last 40 years, the number of ...

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Nest

A nest is a place of refuge to hold an animal's eggs or provide a place to live or raise offspring. They are usually made of some organic material such as twigs, grass, and leaves; or may simply be a depression in the ground, or a hole in a tree, rock or building. Human-made materials, such as string, plastic, cloth, hair or paper, may be used.

Generally each species has a distinctive style of nest. Nests can be found in many different habitats. They are built primarily by birds, but also by mammals (e.g. squirrels), fish, insects (e.g. wasps, termites and honey bees) and reptiles (e.g. snakes and turtles).

The urge to prepare an area for the building of a nest is referred to as the nesting instinct and may occur in both mammals and birds.

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