New York Times today has piece praising the engineering skills of birds, click here.
Of the local species my most-admired are:
1) Dippers who build with moss and mud in some pretty precarious spots.
2) Bushtits with their long, pendulous grass sacs, building a new one each time they nest.
3) Cliff Swallows who are among the original condo developers, using natural adobe long before the Anasazi got into it.
4) Oriole…years ago I saw a Bullock’s nest woven largely out of discarded audio tape. It lasted all through the next winter.
Of all species the bowerbirds must be the most remarkable when it comes to construction, use of perspective, design, symmetry…stuff we think humans excel at. Hah.
photo below courtesy of Audubon Society:
Here’s this year’s edition of dipper nest on Baker Creek west of McMinnville…it’s under a bridge where they have nested for at least four years now:
Towheeblog 
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