Master nest builders.

Imagine building a tree house that gets blown around in 120kph gale force winds.

On a dark afternoon, I saw this Pied Crow (Corvus albus) sitting on that low wall with a strong stick in its beak. It looked like he tied his hair up and that his jacket was slipping from his shoulder, in the meantime it was the wind that almost blew him off the wall. Lol.
I decided to wait in order to see if he would fly to show me where he is building the nest. Guess what? He did indeed fly to the tree where he is building the nest, and I will show you where it is in the first half of the post (5 shots).

Then, I made a point to return the next morning as it was much lighter, and I was able to see not only the tree where they are building the nest, but also where they find extra materials for the nest. Scientific studies have shown that the crows are one of the bird families that are highly intelligent (5 shots).

Wikipedia has this to say about crows making a plan to eat hard-shelled nuts.

Carrion crows (Corvus corone orientalis) in urban Japan and American crows (C. brachyrhynchos) in the United States have innovated a technique to crack hard-shelled nuts by dropping them onto crosswalks and letting them be run over and cracked by cars. They then retrieve the cracked nuts when the cars are stopped at the red light.

Source

This below was the next morning, and I think you will agree that the light was much better.

The crows strip the bark and fibers from palm trees to line the inner part of their nests. They want soft, pliable material that can protect the eggs, and the amazing thing is that they also construct a degree of flexibility in the nest to counter the force of the strong winds.

This is the tree that the crows showed me wherein they built their nest yesterday. If you take a careful look halfway up on that tree trunk, you will see a crow busy there on the trunk.

The crow was pecking away at the tree trunk. Obviously stripping bark and fiber to lay in the bottom of the nest.

But then the partner came along, with loud calls, so as if to say, Hurry up woman, the shops will soon close :)

Yep, you can see that he was in a great hurry, and the female seemed to move behind the tree. Now of course you know females, and she didn't listen to him :)

Just so amazing how these animals can overcome the odds, and they have improved their actions over so many generations to suit the changes. I think here of how the rock pigeons have adapted to the things that are created by the hand of men, such as new houses, and big buildings, as they simply started to invade and nest under the roofs of the new buildings.

We have a lot of different species here, that nest in the cracks and holes of buildings, and I have, some time ago, posted about a hole that was invaded by some sparrows to nest in. The hole was next to an ill fitted water drainpipe, and they are still using that hole now. We saw a guy at a stop street getting out of his car to shout at a bird above that dropped a "blessing" (poop) on his car's windscreen. It was so funny, and all that we could do was to laugh.
Such is life.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.

Photos and words by Zac Smith. No AI and no Photoshop. All-Rights-Reserved.

Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.

Until next time, shalom!