Disassemble This Nest

If you disassembled this little nest into its 350 individual sticks, grass blades, and a dab of mud, and you or I tried to put back together, how well do you think it would go?

Could either of us re-create this airy, wooden bowl, as it were, just the right size for a bird, safe enough to protect miniature eggs from falling, and secured to the tree so well that thunderstorm and blizzard could not shake it free? That is a deceptively simple appearing feat of engineering.

If I could make just two or three twigs stay in these branches, that would be an accomplishment. I don’t think I could make an entire nest stick together or stay in a tree.

A little bird can do all this — without hands — using only her beak.

Try to picture this — you glue a big beak on my face, and tie my hands behind my back. You instruct me to build another nest just like this one using only twigs, dirt, and junk on the ground, and only with my beak, what would it look like? Would anyone call it a shelter safe for wet hatchlings an hour old?

How can an animal with a brain the size of a pea possibly construct such a structure??