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Avian Inspiration
Does China’s National Stadium, the “Bird’s Nest,” live up to its
nickname? Audubon finds out.
By Jessica Leber

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The Beijing National Stadium, nicknamed the “Bird’s Nest,” April 2008.

Reviews Tom Caswell. From Wikipedia; originally posted to Flickr. Licensed under Creative
Commons Attribution 2.0.
One Picture
It may be safe to say that never in history have birds’ nests been on
as many people’s minds as they were last month. According to poll
estimates, about a billion people—or 15 percent of the world’s
population—watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympic
Games, whose centerpiece was Beijing’s shiny new National
Stadium, an architectural marvel more commonly known by its
nickname: the “Bird’s Nest.”

Covering more than 250 million square feet and built with 42,000
tons of steel, is the National Stadium really an accurate, if
oversized, testament to avian architecture? To answer this
question, Audubon enlisted the help of Mike Hansell, professor
emeritus at the University of Glasgow in Scotland and author of the
books Built by Animals: The Natural History of Animal Architecture

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and Bird Nests and Construction Behaviour.

The stadium’s exterior is a lattice of entwined steel columns with

an elliptical, undulating shape that dips inward toward a large
opening in the center—surely, an unconventional structure shouting
for some sort of descriptive analogy. The specific association with
bird nests came straight from the design team, headed by Swiss
architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. When they
entered their plans in the stadium design competition, they wrote,
“The structural elements mutually support each other and converge
into a grid-like formation—almost like a bird's nest with its
interwoven twigs.”

Hansell is skeptical of the comparison. “Most birds will be

unconvinced by these claimed similarities,” he wrote in an e-mail
after Audubon provided him with details about the stadium. When
we think of a bird’s nest, many of us probably do envision a
bowl-shaped structure made from twigs, which some birds do use
to build their nests. But that configuration is anything but typical.
Some nests are roofed, and others open from below. And some
birds don’t bother to construct their own: They use cavities in the
ground or hollowed out of trees. The white tern even goes
nest-less, perching its single egg directly on a branch.

Invoking twigs—the bricks of avian housing—to describe the

National Stadium is to ignore craftier builders out there.
Hummingbirds typically use plant parts bound together by
materials like spider silk, while self-reliant edible-nest swiftlets
(yes, that’s how they’re known) build solely with their own mucus
salivary secretions, said Hansell. Even for their plant-based nests,
it is usually the more flexible grasses and leaves that birds weave
among the twigs to act as the nest’s mortar.

In terms of weatherproofing, the National Stadium’s designers also

found inspiration in nests. Wide holes left by the stadium’s steel
maze have been strategically stuffed with inflated cushions to ward
off rain, wind and sun, “just as birds stuff the spaces between the
woven twigs of their nests,” according to the designers’
description. Indeed, the rook, a member of the crow family, does
pack grass and mud into the crannies of its nest to “weatherproof”
the eggs inside, according to Hansell. Of course, that’s not the only
way to weatherproof a nest: Birds in tropical rainforests, for
example, sometimes use open, unlined structures, possibly so
downpours can pass through them.

To Hansell, the most interesting similarity between a humble bird’s

nest and the hulking symbol of China’s “coming out” party is not
where its designers suggest. “Most bird nests should be considered
over-engineered if they last more than a few weeks,” he wrote.
Natural selection would dictate they be spartan, serving simply as
temporary egg housing. Recently, however, researchers have
collected evidence suggesting that nests may also function as more
expensive displays to help attract mates. Some female birds, like
penduline tits and magpies, seem to prefer males that build larger
nests or put more effort into building, for example. One study even
showed that, in a species of fish, females gravitate to males that
ornament their nests. Wrote Hansell, in reference to this study:
“The inside of the nest is a container but the outside is a display;
not unlike the Bird’s Nest stadium”—which is, essentially, a costly
monument built less for function and more as a “unique historical
landmark.”

Based on Hansell’s analysis, it seems that the National Stadium

does evoke the nest building behaviors of some birds, though it’s
clear that it by no means speaks to all of nature’s variety. But the
stadium still isn’t an ideal tribute to avifauna due to one ironic

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twist: No actual birds are allowed to nest on it. To prevent its thin
outer plastic membrane from being punctured, engineers rigged a
system to dissuade birds from seeking respite on the stadium’s
enormous facade.

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