THE way birds build their first nest depends on the environment in which they grew up, according to new research carried out by Scottish scientists.

Like humans, birds appear to pick up tips from their mum and dad, a study by University of St Andrews suggests.

The St Andrews researchers examined two key aspects of first-time nest building in zebra finches -- choice of nest material and building speed.

Dr Alexis Breen, of the university of St Andrews, said yesterday: “Which environmental ‘ingredients’ are needed, and when, for animals to acquire technological know-how is a major outstanding question.

“Establishing links between the early-life environment and one of the most widespread forms of animal material technology, nest-building in birds, was therefore very exciting.”

To establish such links, researchers carefully controlled the environment of developing zebra finches.

Each bird hatched into a nest of one colour, and, after fledgling from the nest as a juvenile, each bird was ‘buddied up’ with another juvenile. Different juvenile pairs experienced different things: some were given an unrelated adult group mate or material of a different colour to the nest in which they hatched or both or neither.

Project leader Dr Lauren Guillette added: “By manipulating their juvenile socio-ecological environment, we could test if, as a consequence, zebra finches built their first nest differently.

“Using different material colours allowed us to also determine if birds model their choice of nesting material on the nest experienced as a chick, or on the material they encountered as a juvenile after leaving their nest.”

The juvenile period was more important: most birds that had juvenile access to material preferred this colour of material for their first nest, but importantly, only if they had also had an adult group mate.

Dr Breen added: “Together These results show that juvenile zebra finches combine relevant social and ecological cues - here, adult presence and material colour - when developing their material preference.”

Differences in the speed at which birds built their first nest were also triggered interactively by juvenile social and ecological cues: Birds that had not had juvenile access to an adult or material were also between three and four times slower at nest building, depending on the building stage, compared to those with access to an adult and/or material.

Dr Guillette added: “That’s a considerable reduction in speed.”

The study is published in the academic journal Behavioral Ecology.