Crows and Magpies Snatch Anti-Bird Spikes to Build Their Nests
Birds in Europe are prying up the metal barbs, meant to repel them from roosting on buildings, and using the devices as nesting material
Victoria Sayo Turner
Mass Media Fellow, AAAS
July 14, 2023
A magpie nest in Antwerp, Belgium, made with anti-bird spikes Auke-Florian Hiemstra
Picture a bird’s nest. Chances are, what comes to mind is a woven basket of twigs and plant fibers—you might not imagine a crown of metal spines. But that’s exactly how some crows and magpies in Europe have started styling their nests.
These clever corvids have commandeered anti-bird spikes—the long strips of needle-like rods used to repel birds from roosting on rooftops, doorframes or other human-made structures—and begun using them as nesting material, according to a new paper published this week in the Natireonal History Museum Rotterdam’s journal Deinsea.
“Even for me as a nest researcher, these are the craziest bird nests I’ve ever seen,” says Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a biologist at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, to the Guardian’s Ian Sample.
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Apparently, the birds remove the spikes from buildings, leaving behind tell-tale stripes of glue where the metal pieces once were, reports Emily Anthes for the New York Times.
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