foreign [Music] speaking where scientists and engineers come together to chat about a common interest share knowledge and satisfy some curiosity I'm Laura and I'm joined by Ellie and Antonia to talk about the nesting habits of birds what we can learn from them and why it's important for scientists to know about them now before we get into all that quick thing to say is that our last two episodes involve live audiences from the engineering development trust and they
actually came up with some really great ideas for future episodes so of course we had lots of suggestions about engineering topics I particularly like the suggestion about how engineering links to other subjects like physics and there were some requests for different sciency things physics seemed strangely popular obviously a lot of physicists in the room quite like talking about technically forensics and there was a requests for earth science and artificial intelligence in there as well
and we've done a little bit on that in the past so more to come on those things because we were talking a lot about things relating to the environment in those episodes we had lots of requests for things to do with that as well so sea levels could be something that we talk about in the future definitely and depolarization of plastics for recycling sounds really intriguing again we were talking about lots of energy related things as well in the last few episodes
so lots of requests for things there too and as I say we've covered some aspects of these before like Renewables nuclear we can always find more to say about them and we've got lots of other ideas on our lists already so we're glad to have lots more suggestions to go with that so um watch this space or listen to the space Maybe to get back to the topic of this episode It's All About nesting habits of birds Ellie you're a zoologist so I guess you know a lot about this so
what's your favorite bird to talk about oh I don't ever think I can pick just one bird but we're going to cover a lot I think the thing I like most is that the breadth of different birds they all have different nests they all do slightly different things for slightly different reasons so I think really it's each individual bird is special in its own right oh that's a good way of looking at it they've all got their pros and cons I guess I have a horrible story
from the weekend about a bird of prey that it might come up in this episode but it is really a brick room oh no I'm telling you to get me off the topic of grimness I know you don't know as much about this not being a zoologist being a chemical engineer instead so uh what's your kind of Interest or awareness of bird nesting habits so I have lived mostly in cities and I don't see a huge variety of birds but there is something that I've seen not in real life but on
the internet which I really do question how much of it is based in reality and how much of it was you know a doctored photo or photoshopped and is the lazy pigeon nest have you seen them I have seen a little bit about it but I I've not really heard anything about this is it like a thing on the internet like a meme I guess it's kind of become a meme or like a collection of photos that people have are gathering together I found some great examples um and maybe we'll tweet about it later
or something but essentially imagine a window ledge with a few odd twigs and then just pigeon egg in the middle doesn't feel very secured and that is the nest fair enough so not really an S just some sort of weirdness I guess that could easily be just swept aside it does feel like that it does feel like was it accidental were the Twigs put there on purpose were they supposed to what was there more of a nest before and it just blew away I feel like no [Laughter] but I'm not a zoologist yeah like
literally someone is just like here's a pigeon here are some sticks I'm just gonna take a photo yeah I mean I would say if that is a real thing usually they have to be outliers because that's what the internet kind of gravitates towards It's the weird stuff right it's not the everyday it's the his this strange thing there's like one pigeon is doing I don't know I I feel into Minds about this so I've definitely been influenced by uh meme culture to believe that pigeons
make really rubbish nests but then on the other hand I think they just do make really rubbish nests like they're not one of the species that is putting in a lot of effort now we're going to talk about some examples of really incredible nests today but these ones they're just not up there in the grand bird nest ranking system they're not even they're not even making the bottom ten they're just they're so poor but maybe there's also you know if this is an outlier of a
really rubbish pigeon maybe there is one pigeon out there putting in a lot of effort uh to make a slightly better Nest but I think yeah famously they are just rubbish but then does that mean the nest doesn't really stop them or hold them back from being as pervasive as they are as a species they they very much are in the cities so did they need any better Nest I think that's the thing as well if you think do they need a better Nest they're clearly surviving there's loads of
pigeons all around the world maybe what they have going for them is that they're not putting a lot of effort in but it doesn't seem to matter you know they're eggs are still hatching the younger still maturing maybe it's okay that their nests aren't very good I mean I guess I tend to associate pigeons with people right they're a pigeon lost near me where people keep pigeons and you see as you say you see them in cities a lot I don't see a whole lot around here they're probably
competing with the uh seagulls though but if they've got all these people doing all these things maybe they just they don't need to they can just piggyback off what humans are doing that sounds weird there's a lot of anti-bird thing on buildings will Lobby against you know species nesting and covering you know historical buildings like the spikes and the um barbed wire over fences and The netting and all of that sort of thing and it's actually been there was a study
done quite recently I think it was mainly magpies but they found that magpies were ripping off like plastic anti-bird nesting material from buildings and using it to build nests which is I think possibly one of my favorite studies ever okay I think that was a news recently wasn't it that's quite funny that's fun Counterpoint though I've been to sites where they did put nesting not nesting netting up to prevent birds because they had plant equipment as in um like
ventilation and air handling units and because they were on the roof they did get a lot of bird excrement that they then had to clean because then that could get into your vents and things like that so uh yeah how do we live in a nice balance without having to deal with all that and also not having to uh Force birds out of the places where we want to be yeah I think there's definitely a balance of like some anti-bird measures are destructive to bird like birds will get
tangled in nettings they'll starve they'll die which is awful but yeah a situation like that where you don't want bird excrement in a certain area for a certain reason and it can be very corrosive I think that's and one argument to like protect buildings but there are better methods of dissuading birds from sitting on a building but also they're going to do it I think that's the thing as well there is up to us to come up with better defenses for lack of a better word then
the birds aren't going to change their behaviors necessarily like if it's a roof they're just going to sit on a roof because they don't know any better so yeah but the the tangles ones are quite harsh like there's horrible images of birds Tangled in like netting and things like that which is just mean and completely unnecessary I think in many ways I've heard that we've humans have gotten rid of quite a lot of habitat that the birds would have used so they're sort of
adapting to that and this is one reason that we put up nest boxes in the garden and I've been feeding birds for years and we have quite a few trees so we get quite a few Birds coming in and it just kind of made sense to give them somewhere to live as well so we have three nest boxes and I think the first year we put them up we ended up with some um blue tits living in them and they must have created a nest and had babies because I found one very young one on the floor obviously not
alive anymore I thought that's a bit sad but it happens I've seen it before and then a few days later I saw a sparrow coming out with a nest box I thought what that doesn't seem right so I looked it up and it's a thing there's a spiral Colony near us I knew this as well but what I didn't know is that Spyros will attack the nests of other birds and destroy the eggs and force the adults out oh I'm sorry it's I really like blue tits they're like ninjas that's so
brutal I never thought that of a little Sparrow yeah I think it's surprising how many of these like Garden Birds species are quite feisty yeah I just thought it was rude there's so much food and so much other habitat around you really need to do that you're well fed birds like half people in my neighborhood have got bird feeders out do they need all that food and I feel like they're not uh getting rid of the blue tits to then use the nest or are they were they then
nesting in it no they were just being bullies yeah pretty much yeah they were just I guess you could see it's defending the territory right but the blue tits come into the garden anyway and take food so I don't think it really achieved much they're just being horrible little birds I really never expected of the uh the Little Sparrow now I always thought they were really cute up until I saw them coming out and of what was an invasion I'm like maybe not you make a good point
about nest boxes though I think that is such a good way to like support your local wildlife and if you can have like nest boxes in your garden because you'll get lots of species as well my boyfriend's parents get quite often blue tits nesting in their Garden it'll things like that great tits come in and lay eggs it's really nice as well and you can often see the chicks because you'll see the parents coming back and forth with caterpillars and different food for them and you'll see the chick's
fledge which is always adorable yeah we'd had great tips the year after so we did some modifications we have a specialist blue tip box now with a smaller opening The Sparrows can't get into oh it's not being used yet but you never know but then the other nest with the bigger hole that presumably sparrows could fit into we ended up with great tits and I guess as far as leave them alone so yeah we did see little heads appearing at the the holes they were sort of chooping away asking for food
and again another bird on the floor this one more feathers was a light it was right next to a tree and I was out in the garden with the dog throwing a ball around and the ball nearly hit this little bird because I hadn't seen it so I went over to pick it up and like did we put it back in the nest we looked it up again before we did other things like yes it's probably okay because it's big enough and then a few days later we found either the same bird or another
bird from the nest on the floor and we thought we'll just leave yeah I think the advice is genuinely if you find a baby bird leave it because chances are the parents are still feeding it on the floor obviously depends how big it is and all the rest of it but yeah often they will fall out because it could be windy or it could be a storm or anything but yeah usually leave it and monitor it and see if the parents come back to feed it yeah the only reason we thought it would be a good
idea to try and help it back in was because there are quite a few cats around and we didn't want anything to get it when it had like no chance because it couldn't quite fly it was trying so we thought maybe it is best to put it home but then it was also looked quite full in there so maybe it wasn't too crowded yeah oh we didn't get to see them fledge unfortunately it was just suddenly empty and that was a once they fledged it sounds like they don't go back they just kind of yeah they'll be
out then yeah they'll find their own places to live in North I guess they come back in the garden for food but that's it so it's nice to see them around but still a bit sad that they're not living in our garden anymore especially now as it gets towards Autumn I'm sure they'll be coming back if you've got lots of fat balls and peanuts and all sorts on your bird feeder then you might even see this year's brood return yeah but I guess we wouldn't know and uh I mean am I right in thinking
that they only Nest like I suppose it helps to say what's the definition of a nest I assume it's when they're gonna raise chicks and they need somewhere to put the eggs and that's all they're using nest for but is that right yeah that's what I would say definitely like for brooding for laying eggs brooding the eggs feeding the chicks and then until the chicks fledged that would be the place where a bird nests I think I would go with that definition for the rest of the
time they're kind of nomadic they'll just sleep in different places they'll come back to the same place you would call that the nest I guess some might most birds and this might be a sweeping generalization but will have like a nest season so they'll have a breeding time and then the females all the males or sometimes both will then build the nest lay the eggs that whole season usually in the Summer where food is more abundant will happen and then again in the winter they'll disperse and go back
around what do they do in Winter to stay warm do they not use the nest then I wouldn't have thought so but I couldn't say for certain for all bird species but largely The Nest is for the raising of young I would say it could be wrong so I guess in the winter they'll just find some other place to hold up and and keep warm and dry like a birdhouse yeah I mean you do see birds going into bird houses occasionally they often clear up as well so like blue tits in Laura's Garden will probably go in
earlier and do a little tidy round as it were and you know eat any spiders or anything that's gone in there uh before and then they'll come back knowing that that Nest box is there knowing that that Nest is there they'll probably come back each year ah we'll wait and see then we did have um a blue tit using it occasionally it was definitely winter because I could sort of watch like dusk it would go in there just before it does scary evening and that seemed to be it
for the night oh like it was using it to hide out but again no Nest so I thought that was pretty cool it's a bit disappointed that it didn't end up building an S but also it was the the box of the larger hole so it might have been attacked by sparrows again oh yeah it could have been yeah so yeah um wait to see what happens next year now yeah I hope they come back yeah but there are quite a few migratory Birds near me as well like swallows Swift so because I
live near the coast next to an rspb area there are gilimots as well which is quite cool I think some of the coolest looking sea birds we've got in the United Kingdom very fancy I have never gotten all that close to a gitlyn up but when they nest um or when they I guess Roost on cliffs I'm not sure if they build this I can't really see them from where I the viewing Platformers they're noisy they're like it's like a team of dogs like they're barking at each other
yeah they are loud and they're nest in colonies as well so you often get lots of gila mats all together yes I wouldn't say they really build a nest in the way look like a blue tit would but they yeah they nest on cliffs on the sea you know above the sea on these Coastal places in groups and they'll probably just lay the egg on the bear Rock and yeah incubate it but they're they're cool because they do it kind of like what a blue tit would do but to a much much more extent in
that they'll be at Sea all year and they'll come back to the cliffs in the summer months sort of like I guess June to August maybe May to September depending on the weather breed raise the chicks feed them and then they'll go off again back into the sea also for the chicks that is a fun Maiden flight because if you fall you're gonna get all wet whereas in Laura's Garden you might just have a soft landing on the grass yeah flutter down a bit but I guess they can I because I'm
imagining where the cliffs are a lot of rocks underneath so it could be a plummet into Doom it could yeah if you can style it out and glide out with it I'd have no idea if glimmots are good at gliding maybe one of the the adult be able to style it out but I think it was your first flight you've gotta gotta put some serious flapaging yeah probably not so stylish but as long as you avoid the Rocks right doesn't matter if you get a bit wet you receive bird you're a sea bird yeah that's your
that's your whole point you'll be diving yeah I gotta say I'm I feel like I'm gonna keep bringing on the Grim news about bird deaths and birds attacking each other the bird flu is a really big problem at the minute isn't it yeah and it seems to be particularly affecting uh seabirds I've been part because they migrate because when they all come together they start sharing all these viruses that they may not have been exposed to a little bit like freshers week at University
the freshest flu of the Birdwell differently it's a lot of corpses on the beach which like again it was it was a bit it's like something out of Ender days you started walking and you'd see one and then you see another and then you look down the beach and realize quite how many there were like dozens and dozens that is awful yeah it's not just coronavirus it's a problem for humans or like three pandemics at the minute coronavirus bird flu and monkey pox I think oh God so and seabirds seem to be
particularly affected I guess one because they migrate and also because they relying on the scene the sea is overfished for them so they don't have a lot of food yeah probably also because they nest in these large colonies so it probably spreads quite rapidly when they all come back together I do wonder if they spread out do they tend to come back to the same place yeah I think so I'm pretty sure that you have like reports of because they do a lot of bird ringing of these sorts of
birds to see where they're going and how far they travel so you can recap or rescan the same Birds multiple times and see when they come back it's like those um famous Albatross oh wisdom she's like the best breeding albatross in the world and she's really old I think she may be over 40 or something possibly even older and she's like come back to the same island for the breeding season almost every year she's amazing wow I guess there's only like you can only ring I can tag so many birds right
yeah there's the rest of it just sort of sitting out watching I'm sure we've discussed this before in another episode like you'd sit in a bird hide and you just spend all day seeing what happens and that would be like someone's PhD potentially my research was just taking this field for a year observing what happened yeah I mean that is how you learn right is you've got to be out there watching so yeah you can put tags on and I used to sell um animal tracking
equipment bird tags to researchers uh to see where they were going and the data you get back is extraordinary I mean swallows something like a swallow migrate 6 000 miles from South Africa to the UK every year I'm back and that's not a big bird yeah they're tiny and they're flying all that way and they don't really stop they like they sleep on the wing they eat on the wing they don't really land until they again get to the UK and build their nests wow which is why everyone should gets with
bricks Swift and swallow Bricks Built into their houses they're trying to make that a uh like a UK legal requirement that new houses will be built with swift Bricks Built in is that because again loss of habitat that we need to compensate for that yeah I mean loads of bird species again terrible Doom and Gloom but are in Decline due to loss of habitat climate change etc etc so yeah it's just one sort of semi-easy thing that you could do is to get a swift brick protect these lovely
species see that's a very long way to go for an environment that we seem to be seeing isn't actually all that hospitable if we need to manufacture ways Birds to live I think you've got to remember as well that it's like the flipped Seasons because they're coming from South Africa if they stayed it would be winter and so they're coming for our summer and then so they're having like a perpetual almost a Perpetual summer which makes a lot more sense to me yeah I tend to
think about with someone as being not quite as um hospitable maybe it's the right words depends depends what you like I suppose like here it's kind of usually kind of coldish and wet it doesn't sound like what I imagine my usual summer habitat is maybe it's better you know the grass is always greener on the other side and that's why they never stick around for the winner it's also availability so often they're they're chasing insects right so that's what they're eating so if it gets colder
in South Africa there's going to be less insects so it's worse than coming all the way up here to eat our insects for us which we appreciate I for some reason want um this sand Martins migrate are they in the same class as the swallows and the Swifts they are in the same class so much as they're like part of that autonomic group I don't know how far you have to go back but I don't know if San Martin's do migrate or whether there's a resident population in the UK all the way around
because you hear a lot about the swallows and Swifts coming home but I don't think the San Martin's migrate as much or there might be resident population as some of them are great ah the reason I ask is because we have some of those around here as well and the sand banks with the beaches and that is quite funny when you walk over to these little holes in the sand and a bird suddenly flies out I assume that unless they maintain those like Burrows I guess they are so just
holes in the sand right yeah yeah it doesn't really count does that count as a nest or is it absolutely definitely cancels in there I could yeah I can imagine it would take a lot of effort to maintain that if you're not there for half a year later if it's collapsed and you've gotten all the way from South Africa and you're out early knackers and you're like I've got nowhere to sleep it also seems fairly simple though if you are just looking for some sand and you just
drill all the way through and then there you go as big as you and yourself it doesn't sit you and yourself you and your family if they are you know nesting as a group or not then it doesn't seem too difficult they did just manage to fly all the way from from another continent maybe that's the payoff you spend all that energy flying that you keep your nest relatively straightforward and you just have a little hole in the sand so San Martens do migrate so I was yeah
they come back every year like the swallows so they get here then they have to go dig out a hole like with their beaks I imagine I can't really see how it would work or they fly fast enough to just straight through just embed themselves in it and that's it like a bird wrecking ball yep no there will be doing it with their beaks yeah wow but also they come back it's the same principle like they come back to the same places every year so chances are they'll they'll be holes left over
and they won't have to make too many renovations unless the sandbanks collapsed see I'm I am the doombringer today that's all I've got yeah well that's I suppose it's the thing as well there's more development right so if someone decides to develop their sandbank their property their land then there would be in theory nowhere for that particular portion of those sammartins to nest which is why we need to protect these spaces can serve them for is that your camera that is my cat she's
very loud yeah she's looking at me demanding more food as always she's hearing the word birds like all birds of fruit food she's an indoor cat everyone she cannot attack the birds maybe maybe if there was bird nesting would it oh she absolutely would if I if you've given half a chance she would go for it and I think the worst thing or the thing that Springs to my mind is that cats don't really finish the job they kind of do it to to play more than anything and so I
feel like that would annoy me more that it's like this bird has died for your very short live enjoyment because no doubt you will just wander off and forget that you did this and now there's just a mess so that's why my cat is also in Orca yeah I think it's Thrill of the chase a lot of the time like I guess sunburns some cats eat the birds they kill but a lot of the time it is probably just the active catching them yeah so I guess we've talked a bit about birds in the UK
or birds that I've seen a lot of funnily enough I get to get away from that a bit Penguins I've seen them in the zoo I don't understand them they just smell a fish don't get them of all the things I thought you were going to say after the word penguins that sentence was not one of them oh yeah they're really cute I mean they are but they smell I'm sorry oh they do smell no I fully agree with you on that one but they're sea birds they eat fish I mean they smell like fish it's not
it's like if you had a curry you'd smell a chicken tikka masala for the rest of the day I kind of think that would be like if I just threw it all over me this is what I imagine the penguin just kind of bathed in but there you go they've got very different uh habits for if we talk about nesting essentially like how you raise your young I suppose is what we're talking about yeah I think the famous ones are the emperor penguins in uh South Pole because they don't
really build nests because they do it all on their feet so they'll come together they'll breed and then the female will lay an egg and the Egg will be laid on the feet of the female and then they'll do a very kind of shuffling motion and pass the egg from the female to the male who will have like who will have spent the summer fattening up eating loads of fish eating loads of squid and then they've got like a special just gonna call it a muffin top but for a lack of a better word
pout not pouch because that's like kind of marsupialy the flap of skin you know what I mean yeah the colors the egg that protects it from the elements that keeps it warm and then they'll just the males will brewed the eggs and the females will toddle off Back to the Sea and they'll then spend a few weeks getting all the fish getting all the food the males will Brew the egg that's when they huddle together you see all those lovely David Attenborough shots of the male Penguins all
packed together doing the little swirls to keep themselves warm in the winter and then yeah the eggs will hatched the females come back and then they'll take turns going to see to keep the keep the chick alive ah yeah that does sound a bit more cuter than a discussion of cats playing with birds and birds killing other birds because they can yeah yeah but I mean again it's if you want Doom and Gloom and you've got Doom and Gloom from Penguins because there was literally a study the other day
about how I think it's like 10 000 chicks haven't made it this year because of lack of sea ice so oh not even the penguins are safe at the South Pole no another effective human activity in an area that we don't even go to all that often right no it's literally the only population is like a few scientists studying different things but yeah but I mean the the behavior itself is really cool and really fascinating the fact that they don't they have no trees right so they're not like a blue tip
billionest from twigs and leaves and all sorts there's nothing there to build the nest from so they've got this adaptation of their feet and of their little skin flap to keep the egg warm and then yeah go back and feed the chick how did they develop that habit though of walking together with with the egg because because they don't just stay in one spot they kind of get closer to like to see I think if I remember the documentary right so they'll their males will stay initially in one spot
altogether and then I think as the egg hatches and the chick matures eventually they'll they'll go back towards the sea to be closer March of the Penguins thinking of that documentary was it a film or am I mixing it up with Happy Feet and getting totally confused is sort of like uh I don't know a bit of artistic license taken with I can't remember it's been a long time since I've seen it based in fact but maybe a bit entertainment arised it's like footage Plus story building I guess yeah story
building oh my God no narrative with a bit of fiction I think yeah a little bit more entertainment than perhaps a David Attenborough would would be but yeah I haven't seen it in a long time someone watched March of the Penguins and tweet us and let us know what it's like apparently they call it a feature of nature documentary so maybe we should shouldn't say it is dramatized oh okay I'll take it back but then I guess it it's up to the uh the viewer to decide for themselves and if they want
to look into it like all scientists do so you'd sort of you'd look at one body of evidence then you cross-reference other Bodies of Evidence right and you'd see what is the consensus what do the other experts say so if anyone is going to go and watch it then tell us how it compares to other things that you've watched and do you really believe what you're seeing it's documentaries I guess are only as good as the research they're built on not saying that they didn't do
a lot of research but you can show it in a different way I suppose yeah absolutely they've got some more exciting foreign examples of uh fun Birds tell you about so I think I've snuck bowel birds in here which I think is perhaps slightly cheating but they're cool and I wanted to talk about them so yeah I have to enjoy it um so the male Bower bird is out to impress right so he is spending quite a lot of time building this Bower structure which is all twigs and bits of tree and leaves built into
sort of a an archway or like a little tunnel and then he'll get different berries flowers brightly colored objects that you can find and he'll decorate his Bower in the hopes of impressing a female that will be passing through the area and these you should all look them up because these bowel blood structures are amazing when you consider that they're built by a bird probably not really that much bigger than a black bird but what I think is funny about this is
that you'd think that would be it so the battle bird is built his beautiful Bower he's impressed the female they've mated but then what actually happened is that the female will then leave that'll be that interaction done and she'll go and build her own nest and lay the eggs and raise the chicks and wow so it's literally just to attract a mate and then she does whatever she wants yeah pretty much it's a display platform a stage wow that is weird so does the male
battle Bird live in his nest whilst he's built it or after he's built it while he's building it he'll be there most of the time but it's not really like a nest where you would like be sheltered from predators or be like asleep or be resting it's purely like a yeah it's purely a breeding a brooding stage a display if we're defining in Estes a place where to raise chicks it's technically not a nest doesn't mean our definition yeah exactly it's just showing off yeah
it's like purely decorative furniture that does not have great utility yeah exactly it's uh Art For Art's Sake as they say but I guess if he didn't do it he wouldn't have the chance to breed and pass on his jeans so it does have benefit to his Fitness and benefit to him as an individual bird but to the actual raising of the young I guess not but then they wouldn't exist if he'd not managed to impress a female with his Bower and it seems like a weird set of behaviors to have come about like I
assume the reason they do this was to show that they're competitive to such like this is my home and look it's really bright which might attract Predators but I can successfully defend it but whether that actually happens I don't know maybe I'm just making that up yeah probably less about defense and more about the fact that I must be really fit and strong if I've spent all this time making the biggest tallest most elaborate fanciest Bower rather than yes more about showing off how fit you
are and how attractive you are and look at all these things I've collected for you rather than it's essentially peacocking rather than uh yeah it being like a defense strategy so a pigeon wouldn't be very good at this opinion would be a rubbish world but then pigeons don't seem to have a problem with creating more pigeons so why does the bible bird have to go the extra effort I guess female bowel birds are just that much more Discerning but also I guess maybe it's more about
the availability of resources like they live in much more of a forested area there's more things out there for them to use to build their Bower maybe it's part of that or just the fact that they've evolved in completely different continents different cities different habitats different areas and this works for the bowel burden what works for the pigeon sort of works for the pigeon they must lose a heck of a lot of eggs I keep thinking about those rubbish nests they're just going to roll
right out right yeah a little little breeze and it would just roll away but maybe it's less maybe pigeons breed more often because I've come at this with more of a like a once a year maybe two Broods in a season type thing maybe pigeons are breeding more all year round I don't know the answer to that but it could be part of it whereas if they lose an egg or it doesn't really matter we'll have another one in three weeks but the bowel Birds put a lot of effort in
because this is his only clutch of the Year all things to think about I still find it a bit odd that you're fit you're competitive I don't want to use the word fit just sounds a bit odd if you're more competitive than other birds because you build a fancier Nest I just I guess that doesn't resonate with me it's not what I look for in a partner Laura's not gonna be swayed with jewels and gifts your love language is not uh is it just called gifts or can't remember but you want something else
from your from your partner so what you're saying is if someone walks really far to gather some really fancy looking stuff you wouldn't care like you know it's it's that equivalent isn't it the bower the bowel birds are trying to find the most like bright colorful things and they might have to go really far away to find these things and they've arranged it in a wonderful way they obviously have great strength yeah I might be impressed and respectful of that but it's not doing it for me
sorry I hope it's practical I want a house is practical okay how about the tailor bird then because the Taylor bird is what it says on the tin they can show they sew their nests together with plant material so they'll make this slight leaf-like structure and now literally there's videos of them online you should all look it up a watch and they punch their little holes in the leaves of their nests and they sew them together to protect them from predators to make their nests isn't that
incredible they can so that is yeah you think about being a human thing right you wouldn't think animals do it too yeah I'm very intrigued as to which came first but I couldn't find out the origins it was very impressive and they're tiny as well like people think birds are not clever but Taylor birds have learned to sew and they are pretty small I have a really stupid question though so you know when you you're trying to thread a needle with so you've got your tiny thread and you've got your
needle and you can't quite get it in the hole because your eyesights are great can Taylor birds see the end of their beak to know where they're putting the thread I don't know if they can see it but I feel like they would know like if you you can see if you picked up something with your mouth not that you would but you would know that you were holding something in your mouth so I feel it's the same principle like you've got a bit of plant material in your mouth you would know that the same way
that a bird would know that they had it in their bee fair enough I think that's fair it's like we know where our hand is even if we aren't feeling it with our other hand yeah you closed your eyes you can still pick up a pen but how much dexterity do you have could you do something like you couldn't write it with that pen legibly probably I'm gonna say I reckon I could with my eyes closed I reckon I could write my name probably not if the pen was in my mouth but and
you're not a tailor bird but does it have hands so but it's like instinct it's not like they had to learn how to write so it'd be like maybe it's more like equivalent to you could walk with your eyes closed yeah that's true my guess anyway but they they are like you know they've evolved to do this so it's not even like it's a challenge for them they're just capable of it which is so cool hmm what what age do they start you know like do they have to learn it from their parents or is it something
that innately they'll go it's raining it's time to sew [Laughter] rain being a trigger so I can build a little shelter yes I am completely like making this up because I do not know anything about so the the reason they they sew these nests is to keep the chicks safe to keep Predators out and so it's camouflage so they're building the nests from leaves to make it look like it's just part of the tree so then the Predators won't notice and then it'll all just sort of blend in
I guess it does potentially have the added benefit that it could keep the rain away keep them more warm they live across Asia so as chances are that they will uh protect them and if you look at them they do have what I suppose you would call a roof like it does after a lot of protection so yeah it probably will keep going out yeah because I think I read they're in the rainforest I think that's why I thought [Laughter] kind of advice questions about why is the rainforest called the rainforest
does it rain a lot I think we're getting a bit off topic now it does rain a lot but apparently a single Nest can contain between 150 and 200 stitches wow I mean I'm obsessed these are I think these potentially win for the coolest nests or certainly the most elaborate construction I guess it might be interesting to study this stuff in the it's got the wow factor right but there has to be more to it than that if someone's just spent three years in the rainforest observing these birds what's
the benefit not saying there isn't a benefit I'm just curious does there have to be a benefit can it not just be what do you mean like a benefit to Human Society yeah like you wouldn't get funding to go at the rainforest to go and watch birds for several years without some tangible reason because this is how well this is how I know the grant funding works from my time in Academia so they must have to justify why they're doing it right I guess they go They're going to learn more it's less
of an engineering outcome in that you need it to prove that you can you know then build something spectacular is you're going to study the bird so you can learn more about the birds so you could be the first person to discover this like imagine being the first person to be like I've been to the rainforest five years in Asia and I've come back and these birds can sew like people wouldn't believe you so I think yeah that doesn't necessarily have to be a benefit I guess also what could be a
benefit is that now that we know that they do this and potentially it's certain leaves potentially it's certain material that they need it can inform conservation practices so if you're conserving an area say you had I don't know a grant to conserve an area in Asia you could Zone in on what could be potentially really good for these Barrel Birds because it contains the right sort of leaves or the right environment and you wouldn't necessarily know that had
you not spent the time in Asia reserving these birds learning what they did so the more we know about them the more we can protect them so I guess it's about understanding the effect people have had on the planet how we can counteract that and I guess the purpose of having these intricate ecosystems that have built up over hundreds of thousands of years I guess yeah absolutely if one part of is affected what is the knock-on effect Antonia this is basically becoming an
engineering question if you've got your inputs I'm not sure it is I think it's a Chaos Theory question maybe because the ecosystem is so vast and we don't know what effect we can have on something else because there are so many ways it can evolve from that not to use the word evolve in a wrong way but it can develop in such a different outcome from having the same starting point like you know we might affect the tailor bird and then the Taylor bird zeness might have had
some other benefit apart from it being a nest for for them but maybe bugs or other plants had some side effect from that that it can Cascade into another effect we just don't know unless we start studying it exactly so then I wonder so if we're talking about Chaos Theory it's basically mathematical modeling right can we improve our understanding of maths by observing birds and trying to model what they do mathematically the population modeling population Dynamics is a huge Zoological
area I don't know loads about it but slightly off topic there was a study recently they spent a long time observing wild dogs in Africa and then they modeled that population that they knew so well the long and short of it is that they figured out if the global temperature rises in that area by more than three degrees there'll be total population collapse of this of these wild dogs because they can they can see each year if it's hotter the pups don't survive the adults don't hunt as much so
then they haven't got enough food for the pups so yeah all you need all these observations to feed these models so that you can predict what will happen in certain circumstances to the population so yeah this is why I like long-term studies going to the rainforest and observing the birds in the first place is so important to answer my question it's not just about being cool and the first one to find a new species I mean there's also probably an element of that but yes
the more info you have the more you can do with it right so we can't help stuff that we don't know anything about so we've got to go out there and and see what's going on there you go I gotta say though I do like watching the birds in my back Garden it's very distracting everyone apparently there's proven mental health benefits to bird watching so if you need a weekend activity grab your nearest friend pair of binoculars go go watch some birds very mindful very calming is that what the
study said you might have to explain it you can Google it for yourselves and draw your own conclusions but there's definitely evidence to suggest that bird watching is good good for your mental health well we can do that as a future episode how do we know what affects mental health and psychology which is a field I don't think any of us really know much about so it could be a fun one to research yeah I'd be interested in that I did as much as an as level in
psychology and in practice exams I would either totally get what the question was asking and get full marks or totally misunderstood it get no marks so it's 50 50 whether or whether or not I'm going to be useful well it sounds like you might know the most so maybe you can help shape that conversation in that case I think there are some transferable skills from zoology to psychology in the terms of using case studies to learn something about a wider population yeah I could see how that would that
would that would love the animals to understand their behavior so in the same way you um observe people to understand what their motivations are for different scenarios but it's an interesting field because there's a lot more ethics to it like watching a bird or any other thing in the animal kingdom not too weird [Laughter] I suppose it's the same thing of like influence if you get too close to a bird so much that you disrupt their behavior then essentially the research is useless
because you've influenced them in a bad way and if you tell someone they're being watched then chances are they're not gonna respond in the same way that they would if they knew they weren't being watched but then if you don't tell them then you've probably got a whole lot of ethical uh implications that come with that yeah I feel like we could carry on having this uh weird kind of cyclical conversation about what influence is what but uh maybe we can save that for a future episode
so I think what I've gotten out of this is that there are many different nesting habits of birds and they each fulfill a particular purpose so it gives up helps that bird fit into its particular ecological niche study them and seeing how they change their behaviors gives an idea of how healthy the planet is and how much of an effect we've had on the planet as a society and where we've bred pigeons for example we've seen our human intervention can subvert natural
survival instincts of what should be sensible nest in theory and leeches something very weird but then we've also shown how intervention in other areas can help wild birds to survive in an environment that we've had so much influence over so our example of putting up nest boxes in your garden is one way that you can help counter habitat loss on that note we've enjoyed this slightly weird rambling episode and we hope you have as well if you have any more suggestions to
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