Odd sites for nests, but birds know best
BIRDS do not always nest where you expect.
While swallows, blackbirds and other garden birds are fairly predictable in their choice of nest site, some bushbirds make unusual choices.
Recently I was told of a pair of willie wagtails that built their nest on the arm of a clothes hoist in a particularly exposed place.
While they had to contend with windy weather and rain, at least they were safe from any prowling cats.
Nor were they content with only one brood, for as soon as the first family had flown, a second was started.
Magpielarks, too, will sometimes choose unusual places to build a nest, unusual that is from a human point of view.
The nest in the photograph was built on a light standard in the grounds of Deakin University at Waurn Ponds a few years ago.
Some months ago, a pair of noisy miners built their nest in a hanging basket under a patio of a home near Inverleigh.
It was a good site, I suppose, since it was out of the weather and safe from prowling predators.
At Yaugher, near Forrest, the grey shrike-thrushes have their nest on the shield of a line-trimmer that had been left leaning against a wall.
Like the miners’ nest, it is under a veranda out of the weather but not as safe from cats . . . if there are any near the house.
The shrike-thrushes have raised their second brood this summer in the same nest built and used last year.
On one occasion, I was shown a nest built by whitebrowed scrubwrens in a coil of wire hanging in a garage wall.
More recently a pair of scrubwrens nested in a dip-net leaning on a wall in my Yaugher woodshed.
There is no accounting for taste when it comes to nest-site selection, but the birds certainly know what they are doing.