Home sweet home
You can help garden birds with their nesting by providing some of the basic materials
For garden birds, it’s time to think about nest building. Success during the coming breeding season can depend on picking the right location, and then finding good building material.
The first hint you get about the site of a nest somewhere in the garden will sometimes be spotting a bird carrying a straw, feather, or something similar. The busy parent-tobe will often pause for a moment on the way to the construction site just to check it’s not being watched by a predator.
But if you stay still and keep watching, you may get a clue as to where the nest-inmaking is hidden. Do resist the urge to get too close, but keep watching – later in spring you may see the young make their first flight.
Nest-building is a shared enterprise for some species, while for others the job falls to just one of the parents. Among garden birds, wrens probably have the most interesting division of labour.
It’s the male wren’s job to go looking for likely locations and then to put together a series of basic nests. They’re often hidden somewhere low down in thick vegetation, but occasionally he’ll go for something more creative, like a plant pot on a shed shelf.
It’s then the female wren’s responsibility to choose the nest she thinks is worthy of her. When she’s made her selection, she takes over and improves the basic structure by lining it with downy feathers.
Getting the right quantity of material for nest building can be time-consuming for all bird parents-to-be. But we can help out in a small way by providing some of the basics.
Of course, nest building is a very specialised business and you can’t help with some projects. For example, song thrushes like to line their nests with a mix of mud and dung, so are best left to get on with the job!
But the majority of garden birds are fairly easy to please. Dried moss and grass will be put to good use in the building process, as will pet hair. On dry days simply put some of this building material on your bird table, or the top of a fence post, and weigh it down with a stone to stop it blowing away. The chances are that it will be put to good use.