“Just start looking,” says Karen Purcell, who created the contest several years ago as part of the Cornell Lab’s Celebrate Urban Birds citizen-science project. “Past experience has shown us you can find bird nests in the most surprising places. We’ve seen them in helmets, old boots, stoplights, store signs, car tires, clotheslines, mailboxes, potted plants, and even a stuffed moose head!”

The Funky Nests contest lasts until June 15. Entries may be photos, videos, artwork, poems, or stories. You don’t have to be a bird expert or an expert photographer. People of all ages are welcome to participate as individuals or with a class, community center, or afterschool program. Prizes include binoculars, bird feeders, cameras, an iPad, and more.

Entry deadline is June 15.

Find more information about how to find nests, approach nests without disturbing the birds, and enter the contest at www.FunkyNests.org

Celebrate Urban Birds is a free, year-round project that focuses on the arts, creating green spaces for birds, and learning how birds use urban spaces.

A Few Funky Facts About Nests:

• Most common backyard birds lay two to eight eggs. Hatching usually begins about two weeks after the last egg is laid and it takes another two weeks before the young are ready to leave the nest.
• Even if a nest has been built in a somewhat inconvenient place (for you), be patient! In a few weeks the birds will be gone. Meanwhile, you get a front-row seat to a wonder of nature.
• Baby birds have brightly colored beaks that help parents hit the bull’s-eye with food!
• For their first three days of life, nestling pigeons and doves depend solely on “pigeon milk,” a liquid loaded with protein and fat that is produced by both the mother and father!

What should I do if I find a baby bird?
This is one of the most common springtime questions we receive at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Get the answer here.

With breeding season in full swing, birds are in a flurry of nesting—that means it’s time for another Funky Nests in Funky Places contest held by our Celebrate Urban Birds project—and you could win prizes for yours.

Birds don’t always build in the places you might expect. People have discovered bird nests in boots, grills, flower pots, traffic signals, fence posts, rakes, old tires, and all manner of assorted odd places. Part of the fun of watching birds is seeing the imaginative places they decide to call home. Visit the project website to see some examples of some truly funky nests from past years, and get inspired.

“If there’s a funky nest in your neighborhood, we want to know about it,” said project leader Karen Purcell. “You can send in a photo or video, write a story, produce some artwork or a dance—use any creative way you can think of to show or describe a bird’s nest in a funky place.”

Many prizes are being offered, including binoculars, regional bird-sound audio guides, waterproof field guides, bird journals, bird notepads, and bird game cards. Children’s picture books by Henry Cole and the book “Sparrow” by Kim Todd will also be awarded.

How to participate:
1. Email your entry to urbanbirds@cornell.edu
2. Write your FirstName_LastName_City_State_FUNKY2012 in the subject line
3. Include your address in the body of the email
4. Please explain where the photo was taken and the name of the bird if you know it
5. Read and agree to the terms and conditions of the Challenge

We’re looking forward to your entry—just remember that the deadline for entries is July 15, 2012.

(Image: Dawna Van Overschelde of South Dakota found this American Robin’s nest on a wooden fence.)

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  Male Marsh Wrens sing up to 200 songs and build 12 nests to attract their mates.

  

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  Yellow-billed Cuckoos sometimes let other birds do the incubating for them.

  

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  Mourning Dove nests are often just a loose collection of twigs.

  

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  In Barn Owl nests, chicks hatch days apart and can get contentious.

  

They say birds of a feather flock together—but we’re getting into the time of year when those big winter flocks break apart. Birds are pairing up and getting busy nesting. They say a leopard can’t change its spots, but a whole lot of brilliant spring warblers, tanagers, and orioles are on their way to our forests in sparkling new feathers. They say a thing of beauty is a joy forever, and though that’s pretty much true, the beauty of each summer breeding season seems so short by the time August rolls around.

Already, nest boxes are filling with swallows, wrens, kestrels, and bluebirds; robins and cardinals are investigating the hedgerows and Song Sparrows are chink-ing from the brambles. Make the most of the explosion of life around you by joining NestWatch—a citizen-science program where you get to look in on the lives of birds in your yard, and you also help scientists follow how birds are faring around the continent.

There’s no time like the present, so read on as NestWatch project leader Jason Martin takes on a few more birdy proverbs—he weaves in some details about nest life that may surprise you. Here’s Jason:

When it comes to birds and their nests, there are a lot of sayings.  Some are true; some less so.  For example, “a chattering bird builds no nest” may apply to humans, but it grossly underestimates the male Marsh Wren, which is extremely skilled at both chattering and nest building. Males begin to belt out their tremendous repertoire of up to 200 songs in mid-April to mark their territorial boundaries and to attract females. And they still find time to build up to a dozen nests for females to choose from. Each nest is about the size and shape of a hollow coconut, and is built with grasses, stems, and leaves woven among living plant stems. A successfully wooed female enters the nest through a small hole in the side and lays 5–6 eggs, which hatch after about 2 weeks.

Apparently, Yellow-billed Cuckoos agree with the saying “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”  This species is an opportunistic brood parasite—a wordy description for a cunning behavior. Usually these cuckoos build their own nests in woodlands in late May, but they occasionally lay eggs in the nests of other birds, as European Cuckoos are famous for doing.  They lay 1–5 fast-developing eggs that hatch in a little over one week. It takes only one additional week for young birds to fledge. The feathers of baby cuckoos burst out of their sheaths when they are 6–7 days old, enabling the nestlings to become fully feathered over a period of just two hours! Yellow-billed Cuckoo eggs have been discovered in nests of 11 other species of birds, including Black-billed Cuckoo, American Robin, Gray Catbird, and Wood Thrush.  This behavior may increase the likelihood of successful reproduction by spreading the risk of nest predation or other causes of failure among multiple nests.

Often it’s true that “in a broken nest there are few whole eggs,” but this isn’t really accurate in the case of the Mourning Dove. Their nests aren’t exactly broken, but it’s a bit of a stretch to refer to them as whole. The birds build very flimsy assemblages of pine needles, twigs, and grass in the dense foliage of trees and shrubs (and sometimes cacti). They don’t line their nests, so they provide very little insulation for young doves, but this shoddy construction style seems to serve this species quite well. Depending on climate, Mourning Doves can raise up to six broods per year. Females lay two eggs per clutch, which they incubate for two weeks. They brood their nestlings for an additional two weeks before the little ones fledge.

Sometimes “birds in their little nest agree,” but this certainly is not true in some Barn Owl nests. Barn Owls lay each of their 4–6 eggs a few days apart, but they begin incubating as soon as the first egg is laid. This means that the eggs hatch in the same order they were produced (in many other birds, incubation doesn’t start until the last or second-to-last egg is laid, and all the eggs hatch on the same day). Consequently, in a nest with six young Barn Owls, the oldest sibling can be almost two weeks older and much larger than his youngest brother or sister.  If food is plentiful, then all of the nestlings get something to eat when the adult owls bring food back to the nest.  However, if food is scarce, the older, larger siblings outcompete the younger, smaller owls.  Sometimes they even eat the runts of the brood. While this reproductive strategy certainly makes it undesirable to be the youngest in the family, it does maximize the likelihood that Barn Owl nests will produce at least one or two young owls even when times are tough.

Some say “you shouldn’t count your chickens before they hatch,” but I actually encourage this practice.  Every year, thousands of citizen-scientist volunteers across the country monitor the nesting activities of birds as part of NestWatch.  By collecting data on the number of eggs and young produced by birds, NestWatch volunteers are helping to compile a massive database that we use to track changes in the reproductive biology of birds that may result from climate change or habitat alterations.

You can find lots more information at NestWatch, including an overview of the nesting cycle, how to safely find and monitor nests, how to build a nest box and of course how to join. If you are interested in learning more about the nesting biology of specific species, visit NestWatch’s Focal Species section or our All About Birds species guide. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link—and we’re hoping to put together a chain of citizen scientists the covers the continent!

(Images via Birdshare: Marsh Wren by Keith Alderman, Yellow-billed Cuckoo via Tripp Davenport, Mourning Dove by Nina Short, Barn Owl by robinsegg)