Birds are stealing anti-bird spikes put up by people – and utilizing them to construct their nests.
Researchers from two Dutch pure historical past museums first got here throughout the phenomenon in a hospital courtyard in Antwerp.
Magpies had ripped about 50m of anti-bird spikes from the hospital constructing and used them to construct an enormous nest of 1,500 spikes.
Anti-bird spikes are sometimes put in on buildings to discourage birds from nesting there.
Biologist Auke-Florian Hiemstra of the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre mentioned the magpies have been utilizing the pins in the identical method people do – “to maintain different birds away from their nest”.
“It is like a joke, actually,” he mentioned.
“Even for me as a nest researcher, these are the craziest fowl nests I’ve ever seen.”
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Magpies will make a roof on their nest to guard their eggs and younger, and can usually use thorny branches.
However within the metropolis, anti-bird spikes supply an city various.
The researchers described the behaviour because the “final adaptation to life within the metropolis”.
The analysis – printed in Deinsea, the annual of the Pure Historical past Museum in Rotterdam – describes comparable magpie nests discovered within the Netherlands, Belgium and Scotland.
Crows have additionally been discovered making nests with the spikes within the Netherlands.
It isn’t the primary instance of unhospitable gadgets getting used for birds’ nests.
Different sharp supplies, together with barbed wire and knitting needles, are additionally utilized by magpies for the roof of their nests.