BIRDS : NESTING AND EGGS on Yahoo! Kids

Birds

Where Do Birds Lay Their Eggs?

What a variety of nests birds make to hold their eggs and later their chicks! Orioles weave deep bags using strands of plant stems. Bald Eagles and Ospreys return to the same nests year after year, adding sticks, driftwood, and other debris until the piles weigh half a ton or more. Gulls, terns, and Killdeer just scrape away dirt, making shallow depressions.

Baltimore Oriole © Jim Roetzel

Where to Build?
Not all birds nest in trees and bushes. Marsh Wrens and Red-winged Blackbirds weave nests among cattails. Grassland birds nest on the ground, and many birds use tree holes. Some holes are drilled by woodpeckers, which move to new ones the next year, leaving their holes for chickadees, nuthatches, and bluebirds—even kestrels and screech-owls.

Ospreys, immature. © Michael H. Francis

Help Birds Build Their Nests
A fun way to watch songbird behavior while helping those living in your area is to make nest material “donations” during the nesting season. Short lengths of cotton string or wool yarn are ideal for robins, orioles, and many others.

How American Robins Make Their Nests
Adult robins first pick a forked tree branch or ledge. The male helps, but the female does most of the work, adding pieces of dead grass and mud to build a base, then laying down finer strands of grass to make the cup, and sitting in it every so often to make sure it fits her body.

Building Materials
Grass and twigs are common nest materials, but it’s amazing what else gets into bird nests. Hummingbirds build nests from spiderwebs and lichens. Cliff Swallows use mud pellets to build vase-shaped nests. Ducks line their nests with down feathers plucked from their own breasts. Tufted Titmice add the paper-thin shed skins of snakes, and pieces of cellophane or plastic, which may look somewhat like snakeskins.

Learn more about the wonders of nature with Ranger Rick magazine, brought to you by the National Wildlife Federation.

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