Light as a feather....

[Marmalady]

Just had to share these pictures of a pair of mistle thrushes and where they decided to nest....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ghts-nest.html

[LillFilly]

Can't believe the light doesn't bother them.

I saw some starlings nesting in the end of the pole supporting the traffic lights at this one intersection. And I had house finches nesting in the wreath on my front door; couldn't use that door for a month because of the babies!

[Marmalady]

I wondered if the warmth from the light might have helped keep the eggs (and then the babies) nice and cosy?

[wolfie]

Link hasn't loaded yet (@#$%^ dialup), but the green light would make a much better place for a nest than the red light - instead of balancing the nest on top of the "hood" of the amber light, there's usually a full tube to keep cross traffic from seeing the wrong green, so just build the nest in the tube.

[Chromatix]

There is some logic to this:

1) In Britain, the green lamp is often much bigger than the others, in order to accommodate an arrow mask. The red and yellow lamps are not masked. The green might therefore have been too big to make a good nest.

2) Of the three lamps in a traffic light, the amber is the one that remains lit the least - and that is the one this particular thrush has chosen, not the red. This is good news for traffic, for whom the amber light is possibly less important than the others, and it also means that the nest is not left silhouetted for predators as much of the time.