People do it. Birds do it, too—stock their homes with sweet-smelling herbal disinfectants. Evolutionary ecologist Marcel Lambrechts has found that Corsican Blue Tits scent their nests with a potpourri of perfumed plants, including lavender, mint, yarrow, and citronella. And the birds keep bringing fresh herbs, from the onset of egg laying to their offsprings' nestling stage.
Lambrechts and his colleagues at the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, France, discovered the strong-scented plants purely by accident, "just by looking at the top of the nest." When Lambrechts removed the plants from 32 nests, he found that the parent birds would quickly return with fresh fragments. Lambrechts believes the blue tits are exploiting medicinal components in the herbs to keep their chicks safe. "It's known that these compounds have actions against bacteria, fungi, and mosquitoes," he says. "Blue tits are real botanists."
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| Strong-smelling herbal plants create a safe haven for these baby Corsican Blue Tits. Photograph courtesy of Marcel Lambrechts and André Joly. |
Lambrechts and his colleagues at the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, France, discovered the strong-scented plants purely by accident, "just by looking at the top of the nest." When Lambrechts removed the plants from 32 nests, he found that the parent birds would quickly return with fresh fragments. Lambrechts believes the blue tits are exploiting medicinal components in the herbs to keep their chicks safe. "It's known that these compounds have actions against bacteria, fungi, and mosquitoes," he says. "Blue tits are real botanists."
