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The early bird catches the worm, and mother birds are up early to catch the worm, or insect, or other foods that baby birds need. Envitonmental Graffiti has a gallery of baby birds of many species clamoring to be fed. In the picture shown, a reed warbler is feeding a relatively huge baby cuckoo whose mother laid an egg in the warbler’s nest. Link
(Image credit: Per Harald Olsen)
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This little bird looks so stylish with her extra homemade tail feathers! It’s cute, but she’s not just being fashionable. This is a handy trick birds use to carry more nesting material than will fit in the beak. -via The Daily What
Photo: Jerome Rozen / American Museum of Natural History
These sure aren't your ordinary beehives! Behold the nest of the O. avoseta bee, which is made from flower petals:
Each nest is a multicolored, textured little cocoon — a papier-mache husk surrounding a single egg, protecting it while it develops into an adult bee. [...]
To learn more, the scientists watched the busy mama bees. Building a nest takes a day or two, and the female might create about 10 nests in total, often right next to each other. To begin construction, she bites the petals off of flowers and flies each petal — one by one — back to the nest, a peanut-sized burrow in the ground.
She then shapes the multi-colored petals into a cocoon-like structure, laying one petal on top of the other and occasionally using some nectar as glue. When the outer petal casing is complete, she reinforces the inside with a paper-thin layer of mud, and then another layer of petals, so both the outside and inside are wallpapered — a potpourri of purple, pink and yellow.
NPR's Kathleen Masterson has the fascinating story: Link
Photo: sbeals
[Flickr]
For her new book Nests:
Fifty Nests and the Birds that Built Them
Environmental Graffiti has more photos: Link
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Kenneth Feldman and Michelle Dortignac saw a squirrel build a nest against the outside of a window in their apartment. Through the glass, they were able to watch every move the squirrel made as she gave birth and cared for the babies. Better yet, they took photographs and video to share with the rest of us! The squirrel mother is now raising her third litter in the window. Read the story, and see lots more pictures at The Squirrel in our Window. Link -via Metafilter
Photo: Gustavo Sanabria
Spanish art group Luzinterruptus decided to turn construction scaffolding in Madrid into a bit of urban art:
Walking through one of the most commercial areas of Madrid, Calle Preciados, our attention was drawn to these yellow ballswhich are put in place to avoid accidents with scaffolding joints.
There were so many of them installed that the gigantic, threatening metal tube structure had acquired, thanks to these striking points of color, a much more pleasing aspect and therefore we had the urge to stay and investigate the strange objects that people walking by were introducing into the holes.
And one warm night in July we decided to make them more visible so that people would notice, like us, what these insignificant, common objects brought to the aspect of a street under construction.
For our installation Urban Nests, we only had to populate the balls with 130 colored birds, that we left looking into the street from their makeshift homes in the scaffolding and of course light them, to achieve a warm, cozy atmosphere throughout the scaffolded area, inviting one to remain and contemplate such an unusual habitat.
Link – via Dude Craft
Previously on Neatorama: Luminous Craters: Street Art by Luzinterruptus
Peek into a nest with Molly the mother owl and her baby Max (and more eggs) on this live webcam. I saw her eat a rat this morning! Nom nom nom…
Live feed from inside an owl box! This is the first year that an owl has made it a home. Molly laid 5 eggs in Feb, one died and one has hatched. 4 more will hatch this week live on camera.
From the Upcoming 
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Wow – talk about living in an old house. When ornithologist Kurt Burnham of the University of Oxford and colleagues carbon dated the guano and other debris of a gyrfalcon nest in Greenland, he got a very surprising answer:
Carbon dating revealed that one nest in Kangerlussuaq in central-west Greenland is between 2,360 and 2,740 years old, the researchers report
in Ibis.Three other nests in the area are older than 1,000 years, with the youngest nest site first being occupied 520 to 650 years ago.
These ancient nests are still being regularly used by gyrfalcons.
"While I know many falcon species re-use nest sites year after year, I never imagined we would be talking about nests that have been used on and off for over 2,000 years," says Burnham.
Link (Photo: Jack Stephens) – via TYWKIWDBI
A family of foxes in Ipswich, England, have ditched their usual habitat in an underground burrow, and gone with something with a better view. Baffling wildlife experts, they have chosen to nest 30 ft up a tree!
(Photo: Caters News Agency)
Julian Roughton, of Suffolk Wildlife Trust, said it was an ‘unusual’ nesting place for foxes.
‘Foxes are quite inquisitive creatures but this is unusual behaviour for them,’ he said.
‘They must feel very safe in the tree and it might be that they are enjoying a sunny spot.’
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.
