Okay, but what's the deal with nests?

E34. Not all birds build one, but for the ones that do, a nest has a single job and a shockingly wide range of ways to get it done. Dr. Vanya Rohwer, Curator of Birds and Mammals at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates, joins Scott to walk the far end of that spectrum, from nests made entirely of spit to a colony structure heavy enough to snap the tree it sits in.

In this episode you'll hear about:

The complete and comical inventory of one hamerkop nest, read aloud, contents included

What a bird does when you hand it a nest somebody else already built

Why a shed snakeskin in a tree cavity is a calculated decoration

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All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But… Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

American Robin audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML206448

Baltimore Oriole audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML219606

Black-legged Kittiwake audio contributed by Roger Charters, ML202491

White-nest Swiftlet audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML36421

Cliff Swallow audio contributed by James (Jim) Holmes, ML92053871