While driving today my wife and I noticed and talked about these huge bird nests we always see on top of utility poles in our area. These nests are huge, I would estimate that they are 5 or 6’ wide and have sides about 2’high. The birds that live in them are ones such as eagles, hawks and such. Birds with big wingspans. So the questions I had are:
1: Is the skill of nest building innate or is this a skill taught to a young bird by Mom and Dad?
2: How long does it take a bird to build one of these bird fortresses?
3: How do they get construction started, on the top of the pole or on the ground? The reason I ask this is it would seem that wind would make it nearly impossible to begin construction. The material used is very light, like straw, twigs and such. A bird can only carry a small amount of material in one trip, so it would seem they start a small area of the nest, fly away to get more material that the work they stated on would blow away.
I just can’t figure out how they can construct this huge nest built out of only light material twenty to fifty feet of the ground with no opposable thumbs and no nails!
My guess would be ospreys. They build big untidy nests on any high pole they can find near water with fish in it. The nests get re-used and re-built every year.
It’s instinct, else orphans would be the end of the line.
I’ve seen doves build nests - the female sits on the chosen spot and the male brings the sticks. The female sticks them under her. When the platform is done, she starts on the sides.
Dove nests are just piles of sticks about 2" deep and are destroyed as the chicks grow.
Google “Quaker Parrot Nest”. Quaker parrots are a huge problem in many places due to their huge nests, some of which are the size of a small car. Many utility poles, cellphone towers, and other tall structures can be seen holding their nests.
Sometimes utility poles will have wooden platforms built on the top of them (by the humans who made the poles) precisely to make it easier for eagles to build nests on them.
Those platforms are built for ospreys to nest in, not eagles. Eagles nest in trees near a water source, as they are fish eaters. (Ospreys are fish eaters, too, so the platforms also are built near a water source.) They do not nest on utility poles. Recently, a hawk took away an osprey’s nest on the IOP connector. SCE&G built another nest on a nearby pole for the osprey. So, there were two nests close to each other on the connector, one with an osprey and the other with a hawk.
But the question is how are these large nests built, not which bird builds them. You see ospreys on platforms throughout this area, platforms put there for the ospreys to nest. The bird carries nesting material (twigs, leaves, sometimes even branches) and layer them to build a nest. They are built up, just like smaller nests, but take longer. These birds will re-use the nests year after year, with some remodeling, if necessary. Smaller birds may build new nests each year.