Crows and Magpies Snatch Anti-Bird Spikes to Build Their Nests | Hacker News Reader

Crows and Magpies Snatch Anti-Bird Spikes to Build Their Nests

smithsonianmag.com

55 pointsspeckx10 comments

Not gonna lie, that's punk af.

"Foolish humans! They never expected us to appropriate the tools the Man uses to oppress us for our own purposes. The nest finds its own uses for things, after all!"

Life, uh, finds a way.

On a serious note, have people had deterring experiences with spikes?

I had spikes installed on my top-floor back porch and the pigeons kept hanging out anyway. A hawk came along last fall and was just chilling right on top em before deciding to adjust them out of their way.

A four year battle with birds.

https://imgur.io/a/W4GPjdh

Very funny. I also had a dove that decided to nest on top of a security light at my house. I didn't really mind it, but unfortunately there's so little room that with any storm the wind just destroys it.

After the first attempt failed she came back this year, but I just immediately destroyed it myself.

So we'll see if she tries to do the same thing next year.

I witnessed this first hand this spring when a pair of magpies were building a nest in the tree outside my apartment. The tree still didn't have leaves so I could track the progress they made each day. They had a least a couple of anti-bird spikes in their construction (amongst other non-organic materials I couldn't quite make out), but the thing I was most surprised by was the size of the nest, it was huge

Meanwhile, humans are still having problems building usable web pages.

When life gives you lemons...

Ad blocked.

tl;dr crows and magpies both use anti-bird spikes, but with diametrically opposed architectural philosophies...

The crows install them upside down, to avoid the pokey bits themselves and apparently just as a structural support. The magpies install tons of them right side up, apparently to turn their domed nest into a spike fortified bunker.

For some reason I assumed bother of them were using them as defensive structures.

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