PBS Nature - Animal Homes (2015) Part 1 The Nest

Animals build homes to provide a safe and stable place to raise a family. This three-part series investigates how animals build their amazing homes and the intriguing behaviors and social interactions that take place in and around them. Ecologist Chris Morgan serves as our guide and real estate agent, evaluating and deconstructing animal homes, their material, location, neighborhood and aesthetics.

Part 1: The Nest

Bird nests come in all shapes and sizes, crafted from an inexhaustible diversity of materials, including fur, grasses, leaves, mosses, sticks and twigs, bones, wool, mud and spider silk. Quite a few also contain man-made materials – colorful twine, bits of wire, even plastic bags. Each one is a remarkable work of art, built with just a beak! We begin with a museum collection of nests and branch out to scenes in the wild all over the world, where birds arrive at diverse nesting grounds to collect, compete for, reject, steal and begin to build with carefully selected materials, crafting homes for the all-important task of protecting their eggs and raising their young.

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