Bird nests can often be incredibly hard to find, frequently hidden in plain sight. How do birds do it? Is it an accident caused by simply using the building materials they happen to find?
A Scottish research team used little birds popular in the pet trade, Zebra Finches, to try to find out. The team gave nesting Zebra Finches two sources of paper to build their nests from, one that matched the papered walls of their cage and one that did not.
By and large, the finches chose to build nests that blended in with their background.