This is BirdNode.

There may be no busier bird during the nesting season than a male house rent.

Because just a day or so after migrating back north from the tropics,

he claims a territory and sets to work checking out potential nest cavities.

Might be a birdhouse, a hollow pipe, an old nut hatch hole or one of last year's

Oriol Nests, and in each of these locations, the male house rent builds a starter nest.

He'll stack a couple of dozen tiny twigs here, several hundred there,

and he'll use whatever else comes to hand, or beak, too, from nails and bits of wire

to paper clips and hair pins.

Anything twig-like to get the job done.

The male house rent stays at it until a female pairs with him.

She now picks one of the starter nests and takes over construction,

building a sturdy platform of sticks topped by a cup nest lined with grass, hair, feathers,

even snakeskin.

The male's leftover starter nests may discourage other birds from nesting in those cavities.

People maintaining blue bird houses have learned to dump out these dummy nests.

Once a female house rent has made her choice.

This helps blue birds find a space to nest, at least until next spring,

when that male house rent gets busy again.

For bird note, I'm Michael Stein.