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Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

> “We hypothesize that a bird nest might effectively be a disordered stick bomb, with just enough stored energy to keep it rigid,”

I've had the pleasure of seeing a golden eagle's nest on a mountain top up close and personal, and it was absolutely stunning how meticulous and clean it was. It shocked me. It wasn't a stick bomb at all, it felt organized and roomy, the surfaces were flat, the ambiance was relaxing. The thing felt downright designed and engineered.

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Fascinating. I found a video where two eagles work together to arrange a new stick in their nest. (It takes place around 10:25.) They try multiple spots to see where it fits best. [0]

And unrelated to birds, but hearing about how animals "design and engineer" their living spaces reminds me of the pufferfish, which creates beautiful geometric artwork in the sand as a mating ritual. The fish is only about 4 inches long, but the artwork is over 6 feet in diameter. Picture [1] and article [2].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KbtoO6CpQo

[1]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C19XjjUUQAAuymb.jpg

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pufferfish_mating_ritual

The pufferfish thing is amazing, thank you for sharing this!

Of course. Amazing username by the way! :)

There’s a couple Dune themed usernames getting around.

Have you seen the latest episode of Star Trek: Picard?

Ever wonder where the big birds get their sticks? I had just assumed they picked them up the way we would. But a large bird on the ground wrestling with a stick is vulnerable to ground adapted things.

I have seen them breaking significantly sized dead branches off the tops of trees with full diving attacks where the sticks never hit the ground.

A couple years back, I watched an osprey pull a three-foot length of steel wire out of a frayed cable on one of a tramp steamer's cranes.

Osprey nests are wild. From the outside they look incredibly messy, and the wire wasn't an aberration; the birds make considerable use of human detritus in their engineering (cf. https://i.imgur.com/R2nO1Zu.jpg), and while I've never seen the inside of a nest due to how high up they build, I gather the end result is quite deep and spacious.

On the opposite side of organized nests, I vote for Mourning Doves for the most haphazard, half-*ssed nestmakers. They're notorious for disheveled nests which barely stay together, in odd places: https://www.wild-bird-watching.com/images/dove-nest-on-hangi...

https://www.wild-bird-watching.com/images/dove-nesting-on-la...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ornithology/comments/6i7cwk/dove_la...

We had a pair in a planter box whose nest fell apart so often I ended up reinforcing it for them with some twine when they were away! They came back and had two more sets of babies in the same spot.

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