Angie's nesting crows - 1. A nest in the making

A pair of House Crows (Corvus splendens) started building a nest on 19th December 2005 in an angsana tree (Pterocarpus indicus) just outside my apartment window. The day before they were building another nest on the far side of the tree. Unfortunately it disappeared overnight, probably foiled by strong wind during the night. They appeared to have succeeded now, as they were still building it on the second day. I hope the nest remains.

Even as the nest was just only a dozen or so twigs propped across the forked branches, a female Asian Koel (Eudynamys scolopacea) had made a quick inspection when the crows were away.

Both crows were equally involved in collecting and arranging the twigs for the nest. With sunbirds and flowerpeckers, the males merely accompany their mates and just hang around, never helping in wool collecting.

Yesterday, the nest looked like an untidy collection of dry twigs, with a few green leaves added. Today it looks more compact and increasingly I have difficulty seeing what they were doing when both happened to be behind that nest. This morning they were still compacting the nest with more twigs. Sometimes they arrived without any twigs but took turns or even together shifting twigs around the nest. Will they be bringing 'fibrous' materials tomorrow to line the inner cup?

I wonder where they got their materials from? They don’t seem to just pick up the fallen twigs from under the tree.

These crows appear to be loving birds, always standing close, 'kissing' each other and one was seen feeding the other, although I could not see what was passed from one beak into the other’s throat.

The image of nest was taken at 4.45 pm today.

Contributed by Angie Ng, 21st December 2005