Nests play a critical role in bird reproduction. Feathered are the most skillful architects in the animal world. Their buildings are often used as dwellings and other creatures.

It had barely warmed up when a pair of long-tailed tits set to work. These birds are some of the most skillful 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, some feathers, hair, cobwebs, scraps of rope, scraps of cloth and even petals, resembles a ball or an egg. It was built at the very trunk or in a fork in a branch and has a hole in the side wall - a tap hole, and inside it is lined with feathers, soft fluff and hairs.

Lovers of comfort

Tit-Remez, relatives of long-tailed tits, are no less skillful builders. They hang their nests from tree branches, often above the water. Using dry grass and plant fluff as building materials, for example, willow catkins or cattails, they weave a structure that resembles a mitten with a severed finger.

Only the male is engaged in the construction of the nest at the remies. 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 constructs a bag closed on all sides with a narrow entrance. Remez chicks are born and spend the first days of life in this cozy house.

Minimalist builders

Some birds, on the other hand, are content with unpretentious nests. Many plovers - lapwings, plovers and plovers - nest right on the ground and lay their eggs in shallow pits, sometimes barely covered with grass. Guillemots lay their eggs on bare rock ledges, often even slightly sloping, 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 surprising example of nesting minimalism is the white tern living in the tropics: it lays a single egg directly on a tree branch - in some of its fork.

Everything will go into action

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

Many birds of prey, as well as storks, use the same nest from year to year. Eagles often have a nest for several decades and reach enormous sizes. So, the height of the nest of a bald eagle can reach three meters. Plexus of large branches in stork nests 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 the fatty fold of the abdomen serves as a nest - it covers the egg, which the male holds on webbed paws, 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, alternately occupying warmer places in the middle.

Many weaver species living in sub-Saharan Africa also nest in noisy colonies. Birds build their nests on flexible branches that are difficult for predators to reach. The nest must be both strong enough to support the chicks' weight and light enough to prevent the branch from breaking under the weight of the nest. Weavers are brilliant at this difficult engineering challenge. Building skills have to be learned: young males train on training nest models. The technology used by weavers is a cross between weaving and weaving. Their nests are like baskets, skillfully woven, usually from dry blades of grass. The weavers got their name for a reason: they really know how to "spin" thick threads from plant fibers, and besides, knit knots, fastening these threads. As a result, the birds manage to build very strong nests - often close to each other, as, for example, among the public 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!

Free masons

Some birds build their nests from damp earth or clay, such as swallows, whose nests can often be seen under eaves and balconies. Wielding its beak like a trowel, the swallow lays down the lumps of clay layer by layer, making a cup-shaped nest. The entrance located at the top of this calyx may differ in size from species to species. After drying, the nest becomes very strong. Pink flamingos build mounds from the silt with a depression at the top, where the female lays an egg. Nests in flamingo colonies are so close that incubating birds can barely move. Gannets nesting on the islands build similar nests. Swifts-swifters, which live 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 appreciated by gourmets.

A large rocky nuthatch smears with clay spacious crevices in the rocks or builds a bulky nest from clay near the wall of the rock.

Even more impressive is the nest of the red stove-maker - a small bird from the order of passerines living in the pampas of South America. On a thick branch of a tree, a stove-maker builds a massive nest from clay with an admixture of plant material, similar to an old stove. The nest 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

Many other animals also build nests. A baby mouse weaves a round grass cradle on the stalks of cereals. For construction, she uses the live 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 arrange nests of grass and wool in their holes to keep newborn babies warmer and more comfortable.

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

Skilled 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". The fish rest in it at night. A wrasse hidden in such a cocoon is less noticeable to predators.

Bird nests facilitate egg warming, provide protection of clutch, incubating birds and chicks from adverse weather conditions and predators. Building nests in birds is extremely complex. Birds make a nest to lay eggs and raise chicks. However, there are birds that do not arrange 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 two or more nests. Migratory birds do not nest at wintering grounds.

Bird nests are very diverse in their location, shape and building materials used for their construction. The easiest way of nesting is observed in nightjars that lay their eggs directly on the ground without even making holes. Auk and other small auks nest in rock crevices without making special nests. A number of birds - river and little terns, some waders - dig a hole for the nest, but they do not cover it with anything; in other waders, chickens, bustards, cranes, and many other birds, such a fossa has a more or less pronounced lining. Passeriformes, which nest on the ground, make a real nest in the hole, and the ratchet warbler also makes a kind of "roof" over the nest, which due to this has a side entrance. On terrestrial nests are similar in structure to floating nests of birds such as toadstools, loons and marsh terns. These nests float in deep enough water among vegetation and support the weight of a clutch of eggs and birds incubating it. The structure of nests of birds, which nest in trees and bushes, is much more complicated. But here, too, there are all transitions from a simple bunch of twigs (pigeon) to the most complex nests, among which there are twisted nests of chaffinch and green mocking, spherical nests with a lateral passage of long-tailed tit and wren, hanging nests of orioles and pendants.

Some of the most skillfully woven nests are built by many weaver nests. For example, An ordinary social weaver creates group nests when up to 200-400 individual nesting chambers are located under a single roof. Usually trees serve as a support for them, but in South Africa weavers willingly use power line poles.Many birds nest in enclosed areas. Many passerines, hoopoes, raksheiformes, woodpeckers, owls, parrots, some pigeons, etc. build nests in the hollows. Woodpeckers themselves gouge hollows for nests, other birds use natural hollows or are left by woodpeckers. Many birds they nest in crevices of rocks or in houses (swifts, etc.), swallows, many swifts make nests from moistened soil, and swiftlets - from lumps of saliva that quickly hardens in the air. Stoppers from South America make huge globular nests of clay on the roots of mangroves. Some birds - coastal swallows, kingfishers, bee-eaters - dig burrows with a nesting chamber at the end of the course in the cliffs with soft ground.

Some of the weedy chickens do not incubate their eggs, but bury them in the ground or 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 warm soil on their slopes.In many hornbills, after the female lays eggs, the male closes the hole 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 remain in the hollow for several weeks after the chicks hatch.

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

Every living thing has its own home. Houses are different - some have a hole, others have a hut in a tree, and still others carry the house on their backs. But no matter how different the houses are, they perform the same functions: to keep it warm and cozy, as well as to protect from the environment and predators. Also, when choosing a house, animals resort to different methods: someone is content with a rotten stump, and someone diligently and painstakingly digs a hole. Perhaps the most scrupulous housebuilders among the animal kingdom are birds.

The most skilled builder among the birds -. The male is engaged in the construction of the nest. He chooses a twig - the basis for the future nest, the thinnest and sometimes above the water - so that it would be difficult for predators to reach it, and begins to twist.

He wraps green blades of grass around a branch and, with the help of his paws and beak, ties knots on the fly. Here is the base for the nest ready. The weaver selects the material in the most careful way. He does not pick up the torn off and dry branches, but finds and tears off the leaf he needs. The main criterion for building material is a green narrow leaf 25-30 cm long. After all, a green fresh leaf is stronger and braids very well. The nest is oval, elongated. It is very durable and is not afraid of rain or wind. Nest building is an unusual form of female attraction. The female chooses the highest quality and well-designed work. After the nest is inhabited, the weaver leaves it and starts making a new one.

Another member of the feathered family who attracts and achieves the heart of a lady with the help of his building abilities is. In construction, he uses all his design and creative skills. After all, the female is very capricious, and if she doesn't like something, the male will be rejected, and all his efforts are in vain.

To begin with, the male builder removes the selected area from debris, unnecessary twigs and leaves. Then he collects and weaves twigs and blades of grass in the form of a beautiful tunnel. But the bowerbird spends his main efforts on the decoration and decor of the twisted nest. Interesting and unusual is that female bowerbirds prefer blue and light blue. Males all over the area are looking for things of such shades. Anything can serve as a decoration, even garbage: caps, pieces of paper, strings. Sometimes stones, flowers, shells and other details are used that can successfully fit into the design of the built hut.

Strongest nests weave red stove-makers... Both the female and the male are engaged in construction, since it is very difficult to build such a fortress alone. Several months of painstaking work bear fruit - the nest keeps warm, protects from rain, cold and predators. The main building material is soggy soft clay. During the construction of the nest, it is transferred and used 3.5 - 5.5 kg clay mass. Porridge made of softened clay and plant fibers, drying out, forms strong and heavy walls.

The stove-maker never uses the same nest twice, next year he makes a new nest for a new clutch, and other birds can populate the old one.

Unusual nest make swift swift... More precisely, the building nesting material - swift saliva is unusual. The swift applies a drop of saliva to the selected nesting site and begins, smearing it, to apply the contours of the future nest. Viscous saliva hardens, and then the next layer is applied - this is how the walls of the nest grow. After 40 days, the nest is ready.

The swiftle swift nest is also known for its edibility. Many gourmets are ready to pay good money to taste the famous "swallow's nest" soup. According to lovers of exotic food, a well-cooked "swallow's nest" resembles sturgeon caviar.

Such a peculiar "edible" feature of the nest had a detrimental effect on the swift swift population. Nest collectors are oblivious to prey seasons and tear down nests by destroying chicks and egg-laying. The number of some species of swifts has decreased by 80-90%, and some have disappeared completely.

The most "harsh" place nesting - at palm swifts... They collect nesting litter from down and feathers, and with the help of saliva glue it on the inside of a palm leaf in an upright position. The palm swift also sticks eggs on the finished nest-bedding. The eggs hatch in this hanging position. Like all swifts, the chicks hatch completely naked, but soon it is covered with fluff. The hatched chick clings to the litter with its claws, so as not to fall. And in this position - with the chest to the litter and head up, hangs until it grows up and is completely covered with a feather.

Have kinglet -lightest socket... Weighing only 20 grams. The nest winds high above the ground in spruce or pine branches. It is made of moss, cobwebs, down, feathers, hairs. On the surface, the nest seems very fragile and unsuitable for incubating eggs, but it is not. The beetle's nest keeps warm for a long time, so the female can safely leave the clutch for 1.5 hours. When it rains, the nest is able to absorb 60 ml of water, and at the same time be completely dry inside. Another feature of the nest is that it can stretch as the chicks grow. The king's nest is very difficult to spot because it outwardly looks like a small ball of wool stuck among the spruce needles.

Largest nest belongs australian eyed chicken... In winter, during the rainy season, the male and female begin to dig a hole 1 meter deep and 3 meters wide. Then the pit is covered with leaves, grass and other plant material. As soon as the greens are slightly covered with precipitation, the pile is covered with sand. A notch is made at the top, where eggs are subsequently laid. This is how the incubator nest is built.

Since, as a result of rotting wet leaves, heat is generated - 33 degrees Celsius, which is necessary for incubating eggs. The male for 10 months controls the temperature of the incubator, adding or removing the soil. The size of the ocellated hen's nest is impressive: in height it reaches 1.5 meters, and in width it reaches almost 4 meters.

That's a nest!

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The construction technique, the final shape and the main characteristics of the poultry buildings - first of all, their strength and heat capacity - are determined by the properties of the nesting material.

Birds simply pile up thick, rigid branches of trees and shrubs, trying to fit them as closely as possible to one another. In this way, large birds of prey and storks arrange their massive platform nests on the trees, achieving truly outstanding results.

Perennial nests

Once folded, the nest, clearly visible from all sides, becomes a landmark of the area for many years. It will be occupied for more than a dozen years by different individuals, which, due to their natural diligence, will also contribute to the accumulation of nesting material. The thickness of the platform will grow from year to year, the platform will turn into an imposing tower.

The famous nest of the bald eagle near Vermilion in Ohio (USA) was 2.5 meters in diameter and more than 3 meters in height with a weight of about 2 tons. This is probably the most massive building of birds of those that, without any stretch, can be called a typical nest intended for breeding by a married couple. The nests of Pacific Steller's eagles in Kamchatka are only slightly inferior to this colossal structure. The size of the black neck nest resembles a wheel from the heaviest dump truck, reaching two meters in diameter and almost one meter thick. In its walls, taking advantage of the peacefulness of the owners, whole bird families are accommodated, which tolerate each other quite tolerably.

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Materials for building nests

Many birds use this very simple technique of layer-by-layer folding. For aquatic birds, the material is not twigs, but various fragments of aquatic plants. The material is laid in a wet state, which, when it dries, gives the building additional strength due to the effect of "gluing" the drying fragments.

For small birds with miniature nests, the cobweb is one of the favorite materials, and they spend a lot of time looking for it. Sticky and tough, it acts as a cementitious material to hold the individual layers of dry grass together, and provides excellent anchoring of the nests to the branches of the tree.

Nests of tropical sunbirds

The nests of tropical sunbirds are very distinctive and easily recognizable in design. In most species, the building looks like a strongly elongated pear hanging from the tip of a thin twig or suspended from the underside of a palm or banana leaf. In the lower expanded part of the "pear", a closed nesting chamber is arranged with a narrow side entrance, usually covered from above by a small visor. The building is very miniature, and even a baby sunbird does not fit inside, so that the head of a brood hen with a long curved beak is almost always visible from the outside. The main building material is plant fluff, held together with a large amount of cobweb, which is also used to hang the nest.

Due to the large number of cobwebs flickering in the sun, the nests of some species look very elegant and resemble Christmas tree decorations that, by mistake, ended up on a palm tree. In general, the love of sunbirds for the web is all-consuming in nature - the Russian name spider-eater, applied to some representatives of this group of birds, should be changed to spider-lovers. Some sunbirds do not build nests at all. Having found a good stratification of cobwebs in a secluded corner in the crown of a tree, they lightly rake it in one place and lay eggs in the formed trays.

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Warbler nests

The nests of warblers, skillfully fortified on vertical stems standing next to each other, deserve mention. The stems pass through the sidewalls of the nest, which is held on supports mainly by friction or "glued" with a slime-and-mud putty. In shape, the warbler's nest resembles a cylinder or ball with a truncated top, neatly twisted from grass and reed leaves. The edges of the tray are always tightly tightened, the inside is sometimes "plastered" with the same mud, which, when dry, forms a smooth surface. Sometimes warblers attach a nest to live, growing stalks of nettles, meadowsweet or willow-herb, and in the month that has passed from the moment the building was laid to the emergence of chicks, it sometimes rises upwards by almost half a meter. The nest is attached with the side walls to the reed stems.

"Pottery master" - clay nests

In the catalog of bird building materials, wet clay soil is also listed. The main bet on it was made by swallows, rocky nuthatches, magpie larks and some representatives of the family with the eloquent name of stove birds. Stucco nests are among the most skillful bird structures and resemble pottery. They are molded from small lumps of clay and therefore almost always have a characteristic small-bumpy surface, so that by the number of bumps, you can fairly accurately calculate how many portions of material were laid during the construction process.

Magpie larks

The magpie larks are small, variegated birds found in the arid regions of Australia. Contrary to the name, from an evolutionary point of view, they gravitate more towards ravens and, in fact, resemble a magpie with half-cropped tails. They are quite satisfied with the simplest open-top cup-shaped nests fixed on tree branches and typical of most ravens. The only difference is that the larks' nests are entirely molded of clay. This gives only one advantage - the ability to build on thin horizontal branches, "sticking" a building to them, while for nests made of "standard" material that does not possess cement properties, it is necessary to look for a fork in the branches or strengthen them near the trunk along which a marsupial marten or a snake can climb.

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Great rocky nuthatch nests

The nest of a large rocky nuthatch looks like a narrow-necked jug glued to the bottom of the rock. The neck of the jug, that is, the entrance to the nest, is directed downward and to the side. Such a "jug" usually weighs about 4-5 kilograms, but there are also more massive buildings. The wall thickness reaches 7 centimeters, and the strength is such that it is impossible to break the nest with your hands. As a cementing solution, nuthatches use the mucus of crushed caterpillars, beetles and butterflies, mercilessly smearing them on the surface of the nest, which over time here and there is covered with a colorful pattern of the wings of the unfortunate victims.

Swallow nests

Swallows' nests are distinguished by a wide variety of shapes. The simplest one looks like a building of barn swallows open from above - exactly a half neatly cut along the cup, glued along the cut to the wall, certainly under the cover of some kind of visor - a cornice or rock ledge. City swallows mold a nest closed on all sides with a narrow side entrance. Most often, the shape of the building is close to a quarter of a ball, attached from above and behind to two mutually perpendicular planes - usually to the wall and the roof canopy.

The nest of the red-rumped swallow is distinguished by its extremely graceful form. It is a half of a jug cut along the length with a rather long neck and is attached directly to the ceiling.

Stove bird nests

In the art of handling clay, the stove-bird living in the Argentine pampas has no competitors. In size and shape, its structure resembles a soccer ball attached to a sturdy branch of a tree or the top of a post. It looks uncomplicated in appearance, but deserves respect for its solidity, reaching a weight of 10 kilograms.

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The side entrance leads to a rather spacious inner room - a kind of vestibule, to the back of which the nest chamber itself is attached - a deep pocket molded of clay, somewhat similar to a barn swallow's nest. It is not easy to squeeze into this "pocket", because between the ceiling of the lobby and the upper edge of the "pocket" the stove-makers leave a very narrow gap, so that they need not be afraid of uninvited guests.

Why do birds build nests from clay?

Clay is malleable during construction and gives high strength to finished buildings. Why did these advantages turn out to be in demand by the "construction industry" of birds on such a limited scale? The widespread use of clay for the construction of bird nests is hindered by its endless whims, depending on the weather. Either she is too hot, and she dries up, often forcing to suspend for a long time already begun construction. That, on the contrary, is too damp, and the layers of clay just laid refuse to dry and harden, which also entails an unplanned pause in construction.

In addition, it is advisable to build clay nests in the shade. Once in the sun, they can dry out and collapse, and it is hard for chicks to sit in a hot clay "oven". Therefore, swallows love to settle under the roofs of buildings so much, nuthatches avoid building nests on the rocks of the southern exposure and almost always hide them under overhanging rock eaves, and stove-makers tend to lay their eggs as early as possible in the spring, while the sun has not yet gained full strength.

Finally, clay nests are very labor intensive. To build their very small nest in ideal weather and full supply of materials, a pair of city swallows need to deliver from 700 to 1500 portions of clay (excluding dropped ones), which takes at least ten days. Stove-makers and nuthatches, with their massive nests, require at least 2,000 lumps, and the construction, accompanied by inevitable downtime, takes several weeks. Stove-makers do not hide their nests from the sun and therefore have to do their best to increase their mass in order to reduce the rate of their heating and reduce the range of temperature fluctuations.

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But for all the shortcomings, molded nests still opened up a completely new approach to the problem of security. Swallows and nuthatches have the opportunity to "glue" their houses on the steepest rocks hanging over the rapids of mountain rivers or falling into bottomless abysses, under the ceiling of caves and grottoes among the mysterious twilight and eternal dampness, in a word, in places where predators cannot reach ... In addition, the nests are molded in the form of chambers closed on all sides with a narrow entrance, excellently protect the offspring, and on occasion - the parents from rain and cold.

With the help of clay soil, you can reduce the size of the hole in the hollow, as our common nuthatches do. They live mainly in the hollows of great spotted woodpeckers with an entrance of about 50-60 millimeters in diameter, while a nuthatch is quite enough 35 millimeters. The nuthatch eliminates the difference by carefully covering the entrance with clay, silt or manure.

This activity is of a purely instinctive nature. Even if a nuthatch nests in a hollow with a small entrance, it will still generously coat the tree bark around the entrance with clay.

"Don't give a damn .. and build"

Swifts' nests

The attitude of swifts to the arrangement of their nests can be described as "devil-may-care". The main building material during construction is its own saliva, which has the ability to instantly harden in air.

Swift is the best flyer among all birds. He lives on the fly - hunts for insects, quenches his thirst, plays a wedding, rests, sleeps, and so on.

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The most famous representative of the suborder swifts, numbering 58 species, is the black swift, an inhabitant of city attics and birdhouses. The shape of its nests largely depends on the configuration of the nesting room, the presence of alien nesting material in it. Basically, the nest looks quite ordinary and is a kind of cake with raised edges like a saucer.

In terms of design features and construction costs, the Cayenne Swift, native to Central and South America, is the most complex and labor-intensive nest. The structure is suspended from an overhanging rock cornice and looks very much like a thick icicle with a broken edge. According to its structure, the socket is a tube with an entrance from the bottom. Clinging with sharp claws, the swift climbs onto the ledge of the inner wall, where the egg lies. There is another false entrance at the top of the tube, which ends in a dead end. The length of the "icicles" exceeds 60 centimeters, which is four times the length of the builder himself. It is not surprising that the construction takes almost six months and requires patience and dedication from the birds. Placing plant fibers and feathers in the air and, of course, producing enough saliva for construction is not an easy task.

With the help of saliva, swifts have the ability to glue eggs in the place of incubation - this allows them to get by with the tiniest nests and incubate the clutch in the most incredible position.

The nest of the Palm Swift, which is widespread in the tropics of the Eastern Hemisphere, resembles a tablespoon without a handle in shape and size. This "spoon" is glued to the underside of the hanging palm leaf in an almost vertical position. The eggs, of course, also stick - without this they will immediately fall to the ground. "Newborn" chicks firmly cling to their hanging cradle with sharp claws and hang for several weeks, as the incubated parents hung before.

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The nest of the swift palm obscures the palm leaf from tropical showers. Crested Swifts rely only on themselves to protect their nests from rain. Compared to their own size, they build the smallest nests of all birds.
But not from a good life, but in order to completely close the nest from the rains with your own body.

Meanwhile, in the nesting places of these birds in a tropical climate it rains every day, as on schedule - just after lunch, and is extremely heavy. The building is a tiny shelf of several pieces of bark, plant fibers and fluff glued to each other, glued to the side of a tree branch. There is only enough space for one testicle: the incubating bird has to sit on a branch, because the shelf will not stand it. Therefore, the branch where the nest is attached should be no thicker than a finger - otherwise, the shear will not grab it with my fingers. Sitting under a violent tropical rain, amid a raging thunderstorm, a crested swift deserves to become a symbol of the birds' parental dedication.

"Carpenters" and "Excavators"

Woodpecker nests

What professions the birds have not mastered in pursuit of the maximum comfort and safety of their nests! Some even had to master the skills of carpenters and excavators. These skills in both of them are based on the skillful use of the same working tool - their own strong beak, which, depending on the circumstances, can be used as a chisel or instead of a shovel. Therefore, the professions of carpenter and excavator in the world of birds are quite closely related to each other.

Most of the 200 species of woodpeckers found around the world are native forest dwellers, and they have no equal in the art of tree handling. When the main forest "carpenter" - zhelna - gets excited and gets down to business in earnest, chips up to fifteen centimeters long are flying like a fountain around the "construction site". Zhelna is the largest of our woodpeckers, almost the size of a crow, so it needs a spacious “apartment”. The depth of its hollow reaches 40 centimeters, the inner diameter is 25 centimeters.

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The "construction" is carried out in turn by both partners, and it rarely takes less than two weeks. The work is carried out at a height of at least 3 meters from the ground, and some couples climb almost 15 meters. Therefore, in early spring, before the grass has risen, the tree, chosen by the yellow one, gives out from a distance large white chips lying at a distance of 10-12 meters from the trunk. A hollow of this species - even long abandoned by the "builders", is easy to recognize by the shape of the entrance - usually it is not round, like other woodpeckers, but elliptical, and sometimes almost rectangular, elongated along the trunk.

Most woodpeckers gouge themselves a new "home" every year. transferring the old to the "secondary market" and acting as real benefactors in relation to other birds who have a chronic need for hollows. The hollows of the great spotted woodpecker, the most numerous and well-known "carpenter" of Russian forests, are inhabited mainly by small songbirds - flycatchers, redstart, titmouse. They are quite satisfied with a room with a diameter of 14-15 and a depth of 20-25 centimeters. But the activity is especially important and even irreplaceable for forest birds, whose voluminous hollows provide refuge for such large birds as owls, pigeons, mergansers and gogols.

In modern forests, old hollow patriarch trees have almost disappeared, so it is almost impossible to find a natural hollow suitable for owls, owls, clintuchs of a suitable size. Unlike other woodpeckers, who are inclined to change their place of residence every year, Zholna retains a long-term attachment to old hollows, which does not prevent her, however, from building new ones in the spring - "in reserve".
For all their skill, woodpeckers still rarely dare to hammer a hollow in the solid wood of a perfectly healthy tree from beginning to end. Therefore, almost all woodpeckers consider aspen to be their favorite tree, going under the hollows, with its soft wood subject to heart rot. It is possible that by tapping on the trunk before starting the "construction", the woodpecker determines by ear whether it is worth starting work on this particular tree or it is better to look for another.

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Well settled pygmy woodpecker - one of the smallest representatives of wood carpenters, living in the bamboo forests of the Himalayas and Indochina. The bamboo trunk is hollow inside and is divided into sections by internode partitions. It is enough for a bird to hollow out the wall of the trunk 10-20 centimeters above the internode - and it has a completely finished nesting chamber at its disposal.

The red woodpecker inhabiting the same region does not build a hollow at all, but hatches chicks inside the massive and certainly inhabited nests of large tree ants, nicknamed "fiery" for their liveliness and readiness to immediately and on any occasion use powerful jaws and a poisonous sting.

The building material for ants is a kind and rather durable "cardboard" made of wood fibers carefully chewed and mixed with saliva. Woodpeckers make a hole with a diameter of about 5 centimeters in the shell of the ant nest and lay their eggs right among the brood chambers of insects. The secret of loyalty of ants, whose incredible aggressiveness is known to all the inhabitants of the jungle, towards woodpeckers has not yet been solved, especially since the feathered tenants are not distinguished by their modest disposition and regularly eat ant pupae, and without even interrupting their incubation.

Digging a burrow requires concentrated effort and a lot of energy. But the couple of kingfishers work with great enthusiasm, and the spouses not only do not shirk from work, but strive to make the most significant contribution to the construction and wait with great impatience for their turn.

The finished burrow is a narrow tunnel from thirty centimeters to three meters long, which runs horizontally or with a slight slope. The entrance always faces the river, and in its depth there is a round nesting chamber the size of an apple. This is the nursery, in which up to five chicks can freely develop.

Among the birds there are many species that do not bother themselves with carpentry or earthwork, but willingly lodge in ready-made hollows and holes. Residents of each type have their own requirements for the premises. For example, great tits occupy the darkest and deepest hollows and do not tolerate cracks in artificial nests. On the contrary, pied flycatchers, also committed to nesting in hollows, do not like darkness, which is why a peculiar effect of “aging of nests” has become known in the practice of attracting birds. Its essence is that flycatchers most willingly occupy recently hung nest boxes with light inside walls, but almost never populate nesting nests that have sagged for many years, the walls of which have turned dark gray from time to time. But it is enough to whitewash these nests inside, they again acquire attractiveness.

Only 7 species belong to the passerine department. They did not manage to master the weaving business completely, but this did not prevent one of them, albeit by collective efforts, from making an exhibit, which in the construction industry of birds has every reason to be considered the most complex and one of the most bulky structures.

Construction technique

All weaver's nests are variations on one theme. This is a spherical or elliptical chamber closed on all sides with a narrow entrance from the bottom or from the side. In many species, a more or less long inlet tube leads to the nest, which makes the whole structure look like a flask or a retort. The construction technique of the weavers is very interesting. Unlike other birds, they build hanging nests rather than recumbent ones.

First, the base is woven. Acting with its beak, paws, fluttering around the desired branch, the bird manages to quite tightly wrap it with a small amount of building material. Then one of the adjacent branches is wrapped, and the birds connect them to each other with a pair of woven lintels from below and from above. A semblance of a ring is formed, which over time turns into a basket and then into a flask - in a word, into a finished dwelling.

Teamwork of students in grade 3