Conservation comment: Sometimes the birds know best

Fussy nest-builder: The black fantail is discerning about materials but willing to recycle. Photo/file

LAST month I watched a black fantail picking up feathers to line her nest. She particularly picked out the soft, white ones. Those that had prickly pine needles in them were discarded. They looked like second-hand chook feathers out of last year's sparrow's nest - nothing like recycling.

Some birds are less fussy in their nestmaking; song thrushes just use mud.
Still, they are neater than blackbirds, which also use mud but then plaster other bits of grass and stuff over the top.

Most small birds - dunnocks, sparrows, grey warblers etc - make a new nest every spring. Occasionally, if tree real estate is scarce, a blackbird might build on top of an old nest from last year, but they don't go back into the old nest.

That's one of nature's ways of controlling nasty feather mites and parasites that might find a nice meal on their nestlings.

Starlings do go back to the same hole - a roof is a roof, right? You can't go past a good overhang. But they will always build a new nest and can often be seen at the beginning of spring chucking out last year's nest.

My mother used to display similar behaviour every spring. She would pull out the blankets and hang them on the line, over fences, anywhere to catch the long-awaited sun. Then it was the furniture. Beds, chairs and sofas got shoved about, wiped down, cleaned behind. Old toys, pens, pencils and wizened apple cores got retrieved and deposited in their correct receptacles.

The kitchen got the most attention. Entire contents of cupboards covered the table where food should have been.

You didn't complain, though. Spring was not a time for kids to make demands.
When Mum got into her spring-cleaning mode, it was time to skedaddle.

I've picked up a little of Mum's frantic burst of spring cleaning fever. Or perhaps it was the black fantail that set me off, but right now I'd be happy to have you visit my cleanish house with weeded path and trimmed hedges.

Like birds, humans have been building nests for ever. Birds don't change from generation to generation. They've figured out what works and stuck with it.

What happened to us humans? In Mum's day the average house size in New Zealand was around 125sq m. Now it's 195sq m, more than twice the size of houses in most of Europe and the UK.

Then there are the prices. We Kiwis seem to have priced ourselves into two new subspecies: the property owners and the rest, roughly divided along age demographics.
I recently stayed with a friend who builds strawbale and mud houses.

They're gorgeous, warm, dry and not expensive to build. A wee bit like a song thrush nest.

When the birds wake me in spring, I can't help but catch their excitement.

This spring we have a new PM heralding a new generation and thinking based on values rather than pricing. Values we lost only a generation ago. Values like having a warm, safe place for all of us to live and raise our nestlings. Values that my friend the black fantail has never forgotten.

■Rosemary Penwarden is a grandmother, freelance writer and protector of the natural world. Born and bred in Whanganui, she now lives near Dunedin.