How this is done: bird nests
To tell about this skill of the feathers We asked the famous ornithologist, the leading scientist of the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University named after.V. Lomonosov Pavel Tomkevich, who studies the behavior of birds in Alaska and in various regions of the our Arctic – from the land of Franz Joseph to Chukotka.
"The very first and primitive nests are just eggs on Earth. Bird chooses a place, spinning in it, forming a slight recess. During the evolution of birds began to move to different elevations: rocks, bushes, trees. The complication of the nests gradually occurred: from the most primitive few twigs lying on the branches of trees – for example, in the thorns, to complex structures, like facilities or removes, which rifts a mittens. Weaving in Africa are known to colonies: dozens and hundreds of steams form a huge nest, from which the tree can even be alleged.
There are a lot of nest options, and everyone has a different technology. Primitive birds, such as sicks and seagulls, make a hole in the ground: for this they turn around their axis, embroider the deepening of the legs and smooth the breasts. Complex structures on bird trees weave the beaks: there are a lot of options, from simply abandoned twigs to very complex interlacing, which are sometimes impossible to disrupt. Some birds fasten their sloshing nests. For example, in China there are haircuts that make the sockets of their own saliva. Completely different technology at swallows: they collect clay and make a house out of it.
Duration of construction nests is also different. I am engaged in the arctic in the Arctic, they begin to make a nest a day before laying the first eggs, over time, add a new sheet material to the nest, straighten the blades over the jack to make it less noticeable. I will describe the construction process on their example: the male (and most often the nest builds the male) walks along the tundra in the Arctic or for arable one in the suburbs and looks like suitable pits, this process is included in the ritual of the attraction of females and the education of the couple. He comes into each suitable fossa and starts to scrape her with his paws and smoke breasts. Most often in the territory of the male, there are two or three, and even much more than such pits. When a female appears, the male begins to demonstrate these pits, attracting to one, another, third. If the female comes to the nest, the male leaves him and begins, leaving, throwing in the direction of the bravery nest or leaves, then returning, he moves them into the nest itself. So the nest is replenished with a new sheet material.
Can a person build a nest as skillfully like birds? I do not know such examples. Millionna Evolution passed, in the process of which the technology was improved and worked out. We in the tundra wanted to facilitate the search for the nests of the slices and tried to unscrew the holes themselves in the ground so that it was more convenient for them to continue to build their nests. But they stubbornly ignored them. Apparently, our art is not enough for them.
However, there are types of birds that have a shortage of places for nests – for example, storks. For their nests need elevated areas at height. And such sites, as a rule, little. Therefore, if there is a base, a blank (for example, a wheel from carts is installed), then they willingly use it. But this does not mean that storks are not able to create nests or they are lazy.
We, in the European part of Russia, there are few of them, and they will settle very rarely. Maximum one nest, rarely two on the settlement. And in Spain and in Portugal, I saw in the airports of a colony from many dozen and hundreds of nests on all lighting arrangements of the airport – it just amazes! And no one suits them there any nests. They themselves do it: they fly into search, tested beams and other building material. They clearly lack places for colonial nesting, they eat almost on each other’s head. We, too, storks often cost no help. Birds cut off the water towers – choose the place and nest.
