Birds Build Nests from Anti-Bird Spikes

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/13/science/magpies-birds-nests.html

by dwighttk • 3 years ago

189 67 3 years ago

nytimes.com

chris72205• 3 years ago

https://archive.li/2023.07.13-183756/https://www.nytimes.com...

boomboomsubban2• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/7QMu7

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36689463

It's hard to forget that hair.

sschueller• 3 years ago

What does the NYTimes article add to the previous article at naturalis.nl other than a paywall?

boomboomsubban2• 3 years ago

Better pictures. I read the naturalis article and had no real clue what I was looking at.

tilsammans• 3 years ago

Auke-Florian is great. He's a talented presenter in addition to being a scientist. In The Netherlands, he is sometimes flown in for sciency sound bites on national television. Memorable hair, indeed. https://youtu.be/UgnK483jiDE

bennyg• 3 years ago

I had birds build a nest in a nook where I put the spikes going up and down like stalactites and stalagmites. They didn’t care and built right in the middle of the spikes… will look at just boarding up the nook next year I guess.

blackbeans• 3 years ago

It was explained in the original Dutch video that birds choose to build a nest under the spikes, because it protects them from other animals trying to steal their eggs.

hecatia• 3 years ago

This sort of happens in the wild too. Weaverbirds spend their life on spiny trees and build their nests on branches of such spiny trees.

Fiahil3• 3 years ago

Spikes and other stuff like these never work. You know what does ? This : https://www.amazon.com/Hausse-Scarecrow-Sculpture-Deterrents...

It's also cheaper, looks better and protect a much larger area.

saagarjha• 3 years ago

Right up until they realize it never moves?

aziaziazi• 3 years ago

A friend of mine got a pond with fishes in his garden, that longed acted (unfortunately for the fishes) as a food store for herons migrating. He then used a fake heron that worked pretty well the first year, but not the second. Next years he moved the plastic heron every couple weeks during the period he knows they comes and apparently this works.

He’s from Europe and use his own experience but apparently this site may help for US residents

https://explorer.audubon.org/explore/species/1387/great-blue...

BoxOfRain• 3 years ago

I went to university by the sea in a town known for its pterodactyl-like seagulls. Not only were the sculptures ineffective the real hawks they hired to scare the gulls apparently got turfed out by them!

You could always tell who the freshers were on sight, they were the only people who didn't know you don't eat outside without suitable cover.

Fiahil3• 3 years ago

It doesn't take a lot of effort to research potential predator/competitors for seagulls and then hold trials on what works. There's a lot of options, and if the gang doesn't seem intimidated by your choice of predators, invent one.

I'm sure this would be a very interesting project for any student!

xeonmc• 3 years ago

Dinosaurs never really went away, they just Moore's law'd themselves.

KineticLensman2• 3 years ago

real hawks they hired to scare the gulls apparently got turfed out by them

Lots of raptors, especially falcons, are essentially specialised sprint predators and won't pick a fight with another bird any more than a cheetah would try to fight a hyena.

scrapcode• 3 years ago

Looks better? Highly subjective. I have some kind of birds that build nests in a corner of my front porch that's about ~18ft above ground. I'm not sure a plastic own hanging out up there would be the most welcoming.

mplewis• 3 years ago

Oh, those are the statues the pigeons sat on and pooped on at my last company’s patio.

kevin_thibedeau• 3 years ago

There is a grocery store near me with a dove nesting on a light fixture directly above the entry. A fake owl is two feet away. The dove doesn't care.

hypertele-Xii• 3 years ago

My city has these kite-like predatory bird -resembling bird-scare things on some buildings. Hawk-shaped kite tied on a length of string to a building roof. When the wind picks up, it animates the kite to look like a predatory bird hovering. Very effective.

joe__f• 3 years ago

I think they know. I definitely think they know when they crap on your head.

AndrewOMartin• 3 years ago

Life, uh, finds a way.

anonymous344• 3 years ago

"if something isn't working, it does not mean we should stop selling it" -big pharma

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

Is this an omen for Twitter?

quercusa• 3 years ago

Maybe if it were pigeons.

prody2• 3 years ago

I wish people would stop posting paywalled links.

sparrowInHand• 3 years ago

We could build websites from snippets of paywalled links. Just using them as resource for something usefull.

Digit-Al• 3 years ago

I have the following bookmarklet saved. When I hit a paywall that can't be defeated by readerview I use this:

"javascript:window.open('://archive.is/'+window.location.href.replace(window.location.search,''))"

(Put "https" before the "://" - I couldn't work out how to prevent it being turned into a URL otherwise.)

prody2• 3 years ago

I know how to bypass it, but websites should see a dropoff of clicks under paywall if it is to be discouraged. I do pay for writing that I know and like, don't get me wrong, but if the NYT want to have a member-only website, so be it.

glenstein• 3 years ago

I found this to be frustratingly light on detail. The most obvious question, the question hanging over basically every sentence: don't they, uh, hurt? How do you incorporate spikes into a nest without living a life of constantly being pricked?

It does mention that Antwerp magpies have a special use where spikes are outward pointing, effectively helping to create a bunker keeping predators away. It also says something frustratingly vague about spikes being bent "inward" and vaguely referencing structural support, which evokes an image of the pokey from Matilda.

But, this article creates the feeling that you can only get from the internet, a feeling like you're in a room with a thousand people but also with nobody. Because the obvious question, well, if you pressed your hand down on such a nest, would it be spiky? If so, is the life of a bird relying on these for a nest a torturous life of constantly choosing its steps carefully in a nest that's a blend of spikes and ordinary debris? Is there some creative design that they have resorted to that mitigates this? Are they just light enough that they can do some bird equivalent of the human laying on a bed of spikes trick? Maybe the statistical average of all the different angles of the spikes, when arranged into a meshy nest, is such that the "bed" has an average consistency that's bearable to the birds?

It's like all of the normal questions I would want to ask, but the only specific comments in the article are about things that appear to be unusual special cases.

davidgerard2• 3 years ago

the paper:

https://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/doc...

__MatrixMan__2• 3 years ago

The relevant part is in the discussion section towards the end. These nests aren't exclusively made of spikes. Often it's just the roofs, which serve to defend against attack by other birds but which don't have support the nest builder.

Applejinx• 3 years ago

Gotta hand it to corvids. They're not doing it by accident, they know exactly what they're doing. I don't know what's up with the crows that are pointing the spikes inward. Do we have self-loathing millenial crows out there? Is it an art statement or some kind of metaphor for crow life, to attract gothy crow girls?

JackFr• 3 years ago

Have you ever tried to scratch your back with only a wing?

EGreg• 3 years ago

Maybe they're doing it so that predator birds will get cut if they enter...

Retric• 3 years ago

you can only get from the internet

It’s a NYT article, how exactly is reading it online different from reading it in a newspaper?

StrictDabbler2• 3 years ago

Bird spikes are dull. The goal is not to hurt birds. They just create a surface that is less practical to land or rest on.

They do this by being vertical, parallel, and too close together for a bird to get a good sideways grip on any one spike. They don't prick the birds.

This means they're effectively a forest of highly uniform metal twigs.

Ordinary nest building with removed spikes would create a surface as comfortable as any other nest. It's not like twigs aren't pokey.

oneeyedpigeon• 3 years ago

That doesn't mean they can't be cruel, of course. I've seen a bird die on these spikes.

pessimizer• 3 years ago

Birds only weigh a few ounces. They're not compressing their nests so hard that fairly dull spikes would cut into them.

ryandrake• 3 years ago

Another fundamental question not addressed:

Rows of these sharp metal pins have become a common feature of the urban environment, installed on rooftops and ledges to discourage birds from perching or nesting on buildings.

Who installs these things and why? Maybe I'm not urban enough, but I don't understand why you'd even install these things. What's wrong with birds perching on a building?

yourusername• 3 years ago

They also defecate on your building. Especially with doves this can turn your building nasty looking quickly and balconies unuseable.

Modified3019• 3 years ago

I’m going to have to install some screen mesh around the tops of the pillars around my home entryway, because birds keep perching and trying to build nests there. Just yesterday had to remove a house finch nest that appeared the other day. As much as I like them, I’m not letting them do that there.

The problem is when birds hang around someplace, they quickly cover the ledges, walls and ground with shit.

That and I don’t want baby birds screaming at 4am a few meters from where I sleep.

astrodust• 3 years ago

Pigeons, mostly. They poop on everything and that accumulated poop can be a real health hazard.

https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/pigeon.pag...

If you think birds don't poop a lot remember there are entire islands made of bird poop.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/nauru

RandallBrown• 3 years ago

I have a rooftop deck on my house. I put up some wooden poles to hang some lights on and after my first summer with the poles up they were all covered in bird poop.

It's not a problem here in the winter when it rains enough that the poop washes away but we can go weeks or months in the summer and the accumulation of poop can smell bad.

Some bird spikes on the top of each pole has mostly solved the problem.

quickthrowman• 3 years ago

They shit everywhere. Pigeons especially. A layer of bird shit is bad for your health and bad for business.

strken• 3 years ago

The most common use near where I live is protecting signs, lights, or electronic equipment from bird poo. Second most common is protecting whatever is underneath the spikes, like car parking, pedestrian paths, or windows. You see them a lot in train stations protecting the electronic signs so they stay readable, or anything else hung from the roof which people might stand under.

Generally birds have plenty of other places to rest where they won't be inconvenient to humans. I've never seen anyone cover an entire rooftop with spikes.

davidgerard2• 3 years ago

Here's the actual paper (in English):

https://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/doc...

dreamcompiler• 3 years ago

Kinda reminds me of how some older people would pick up their prescriptions at my Dad's pharmacy and tell him "Don't give me any of those child-proof caps. I don't have any children at home to open them for me."

msla• 3 years ago

Continuing tangent:

The Optum RX mail-order pharmacy has caps where both sides can be the "bottom" and screw onto the bottle, but one side is childproof and the other is just a normal screw attachment. Since they come with the childproof side of the cap engaged, this does present the bootstrapping problem of getting the bottle open to begin with, but thereafter you can just use the other side of the cap.

kube-system2• 3 years ago

I believe those bottles are common at many US pharmacies these days.

falcor84• 3 years ago

This sounds like a particularly useful adaptation for shrikes[0], so they can impale their prey directly into their "dining room".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrike

jrmg2• 3 years ago

I have a shed in my backyard that contains a hobby electronics workbench. A couple of years ago, I could swear that I was going through through hole 104 capacitors faster than I could reconcile.

Around this time I noticed that a vent hole in the side of the shed was uncovered, and likely had been for some time, which I fixed.

A few months later I was doing a good spring cleaning, and I found in the eaves of the shed a nest made mostly of long pine needles (from outside the shed), but with a substantial spattering of through-hole components too!

A bird had found the broken vent, and made a home in the shed using whatever ‘sticks’ were handy to build its nest. Unfortunately I probably blocked it off from its home when I repaired the vent. I’m glad to say no eggs or dead baby chicks were in it when I found it…

incahoots• 3 years ago

Good on you for following up on the nest to determine the potential aftermath.

huseyinkeles• 3 years ago

that sounds really interesting, do you by any chance have a picture of it? would really love to see

jrmg2• 3 years ago

I wish I did!

Unfortunately it was above head height, and I had it half dismantled (‘What are all these pine needles doing up here?! And - wait - capacitors?!’) before I realized what it was.

pryelluw• 3 years ago

You had a birduino flying in for components. :D

busyant• 3 years ago

My recollection is many birds use their nests for 2 to 4 weeks, so maybe it was finished with your capacitors by the time you found them. I love this story.

huehehue• 3 years ago

This reminds me of an art project that I've wanted to do for a long time -- turning anti-homeless fixtures into furniture, or augmenting the fixtures to be comfortable.

For example, some sloped areas have spikes to prevent folks from reclining or laying down, but it would be possible to build a chair/bed that's held in place by those very spikes.

Birds Build Nests from Anti-Bird Spikes

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