Humans can help birds in many ways. Some people have birds as their pets and nurture them as to how they will be nurturing their own kids. Nests are very important for a bird to be able to live and lay eggs. Nests are more like a house for some species of birds. Birds use their nests for raising their young ones by laying and nurturing eggs. Though it is not quite easy to build a comfortable nest for them, some birds do it every year when it is time to lay eggs and raise young ones.

Image Source - Creative Common Licence

Some species of birds build the nest as a one time task and every year they keep enhancing or updating their nests. Humans can take up some interesting role in helping a bird. If you notice a bird building nests in a tree or any other location near your house, you can do some specific things to help the bird. Let's see some specific things that humans can do to protect the birds and help them build their nest to live. Other than nesting let us also see how else we can help and protect the birds in our locality as they are very important for maintaining a proper ecological balance.

Providing necessary materials

Birds usually use materials such as sticks and grasses to build their nests. The materials used by the birds differ from one species to another. It will take quite some time for the birds to complete their nesting procedures. Not just time but also energy to looks for materials needed to build the nest and complete the nest. The sooner they complete building the nest, the faster they can lay eggs and start nurturing them. Birds use natural materials such as fibers and dead sticks from the plants to build their awesome nest. Some birds are expert in weaving or tailoring their nest. Some birds just gather sticks and create a simple nest. You can help the birds get necessary materials by placing materials like a sponge, threads, fur, hair, etc near your house for them to pick and use. These type of nesting materials are usually used by House sparrows and other locality birds. Apart from the natural materials, some birds are also dependent on artificial materials made out of plastic.

Image Source - Creative Common Licence

Birds using other types of materials can have a different type of challenge. There are some birds that use mud to build their nests. If you find any such bird living in your locality, you can provide them wet mud in your garden for them to easily pick and use to build their nest. It is usually not just the mud they carry and build their nest. They mix it with their saliva to make sure the nest is strong to sustain different conditions. If your locality is a dry region and if there are no ways to get wet mud, your muddy puddle will be very helpful for them to easily build their nests.

A water bowl can help during summer

During summer season birds will not easily get water near the surface. In some places, even the lakes and pond will be dry. They will end up traveling lots of distance in search of water to drink and feed their young ones. As a good deed to help the birds during the summer season, we can keep a bowl of water in our terrace region or any place near our house that will be suitable for birds to feed. Some birds are also clever enough to drink water from any water source available nearby. That can even be a tap.

Image Source - Creative Common Licence

Some people can also be so generous to make an artificial pond in the garden region for birds and other species living in the locality to drink. You can also get to watch the beauty of birds playing in these waters. These ponds are usually very attractive to squirrels living in the locality. They find it to be the right place to quench their thirst. Garden pond will be even more comfortable than a water bowl because it can help multiple birds and the maintenance and refilling may not be complicated or challenging.

Be generous to provide some food

For people who raise birds as their pets, this may be an obvious thing. For people who live in a locality where there are lots of birds, helping them with food can be a good option. As a next step to providing water to the birds, you can provide good food for the birds to be able to self-sustain. Birds will obviously look for food in the locality they live.

Image Source - Creative Common Licence

Sometimes in a place where there are not enough trees or garden areas, it might be quite challenging to find nutritious food. In that case, the food that you offer will be of great help to them. Food requirement of birds differs from one species to another. Most of the birds are comfortable with small grains. If you are not sure which food will be comfortable for a bird near your area, you can try to offer few things on an experimental basis. Some birds are satisfied with grains and some are satisfied with small fruits. It purely depends on the species of the bird.

Protect their eggs if you can

If you really wish to protect the eggs of birds it is not so easy. The first task is to get used to the bird that builds the nest around your house. After they become comfortable with you, they will not be afraid to lose the eggs to you. In such cases, you will get a good rapport with the birds to help them during their incubation period. Nest of some species of birds will be movable. After the bird takes a good amount of time and effort to build the nest, you can move the nest to a suitable place or protective place with their permission. I'm not going to brief about the part explaining how to get permission from the bird. You can figure it out.

Image Source - Creative Common Licence

Some domestic pet birds will be generous enough to provide their eggs to you for consumption. People will even argue saying that they don't give it to us but we take it. In a way that is also true. There are two types of eggs, one that hatches and others that don't hatch. You can check and take the eggs that don't hatch.

Expecting things in return

Helping others is a good mentality of people but some people also expect things in return. Either it is fellow humans or it is other species, the ideology is common. If you are planning to help a bird, it will obviously be the case that you will not be able to expect anything in return from them. Help the birds in whatever ways you can and don't expect anything in return. This is something that we can do from our side but from the bird's side, they do help us indirectly. Birds are highly important in maintaining the ecological balance in our surroundings. There are few ways in which birds help humans or nature:

Image Source - Creative Common Licence

• Birds are capable of pollinating some specific tree flowers. Though most of the pollination part is carried out by the insects, birds are also responsible for the pollination of few flowers.
• Birds swallow the fruits along with the seeds and digest the fruit part and excrete the seed by adding a layer of manure coating to the seeds. When these seeds are dropped by them in different places, we get new trees.
• Some birds feed on insects. It will be very helpful in maintaining the ecological balance by keeping the insect population regulated.
• Alternative medication methods believe that Birds sing songs that are pleasant and has therapeutic properties. Growing bird in-house also gives a good piece of mind solving all your phycological problems.
• There are multiple products that come from the birds. Either the products come to us after the bird is dead or when they are alive.
• Feathers of birds have been in use for several years for decorations.

The way birds can help other species is a huge topic to write about. I'm stopping with the above-mentioned points.

Follow @SteemSTEM team members to read more such interesting articles. Browse more articles in #steemSTEM tag or chat live with SteemSTEM members in discord.

gif courtesy: @rocking-dave

Disclaimer: This article is my original content written based on my experiences with birds and understanding by reading materials available online.