Many buildings feature spikes designed to deter birds from landing, but some birds are taking them to build homes of their own.
Spikes placed on buildings to deter birds are being used by birds to build nests in several locations around Europe.at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands. “But it’s kind of heart-warming that these birds are actually outsmarting us and using anti-bird material for their own benefits.”
Birds often use thorny branches as nest material, sometimes placing them as a roof to ward off predators and protect their young. In cities, however, there is a lack of prickly branches around, so a few birds have turned to anti-bird spikes.So far, Hiemstra and his colleagues have observed this behaviour in carrion crows at one site in the Netherlands and in Eurasian magpies In a tree near a hospital in Antwerp, Belgium, a magpie made a nest containing around 1500 metal spikes.
The researchers have also seen magpie nests with defensive domes containing barbed wire and knitting needles.A monthly celebration of the biodiversity of our planet’s animals, plants and other organisms.They hope to find out whether the spike-laden nests are better at defending chicks than regular ones. “Is there more breeding success when
birds build nests with the anti-bird spikes? It could be possible, but for that now we have just too low of a number of observations,” says Hiemstra. “We really hope that people start looking at nests more closely, so we can find more of these examples,” he says.
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