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Birding in Fourways Gardens
The Southern
Masked-Weaver
and their nests
Ever wondered what drives the
Southern Masked-Weaver, a
common and sometimes much
maligned bird in our gardens?
After the frenzied breeding activity of
summer the males will moult into their
winter plumage when they resemble the
females and will become unobtrusive,
mixing with many of the other seedeaters in
the area. But even before the last cold wind
of winter has blown away they will begin to
stake out territories and will start building
their familiar hanging nests. In recent years
this has started to happen as early as mid
July (maybe as a consequence of warmer
winters?) even before the male birds have
moulted into their bright yellow breeding
plumage dress.
The Southern Masked-Weaver is the ‘real
estate’ specialist of our gardens, because
males will vie for the best spots to build the
homes that will attract the females... thus
it is all about ‘location, location, location!’
As a polygamous species once a male has
courted a female and she has laid her eggs
he will immediately set about building
another nest to attract the next female.
If after a few days the new nest has not
succeeded in attracting another female his
instinct will cause him to destroy the nest
by pulling it apart with his bill in a matter
of minutes, before trying again with a new
nest. Note it is the male who destroys the
nest and not the female as many people
believe. Females will only accept freshly
constructed green nests and will ignore
faded brown ones which are never re-used.
The female’s role is to carry out all the
brooding and feeding of the nestlings. The
male will not help in these tasks at all and at
best he will repair any nest that may suffer
storm damage, but will not assist in any
other way. If a nest has been the victim of a
raid by predators, such as from the African
Harrier-Hawk - a bird which specialises in
raiding weaver nests and which has been
seen in our area - then he will destroy and
rebuild as before so that the breeding
process can continue.
Gardeners will often complain that Southern
Masked-Weavers are damaging their palm
trees, which they strip for nesting material,
or are pecking all the leaves off branches
Fourways Gardens | Eleventh Issue 2010 • 11
in the vicinity of their nests. There is no
simple solution to this problem. I have seen
people tie pieces of tin foil to the affected
trees, which when dangling in the wind
are designed to scare the birds off. This
appears to have a limited affect however
and does not look very good in the garden.
Someone once said they took handfuls of
soil and gently threw this at the weavers to
discourage them from further nest building
and that they succeeded in moving the
weavers off, presumably to a neighbouring
garden! It may be a better practice to allow
the grass to grow a little longer in one corner
of your garden as they will use long grass
stalks for nest building, something they do
in the wild where there are no palm trees.
The defoliation of branches around nests
mercifully does not seem to do permanent
damage to trees either and usually weavers
will move to different locations each season.
If it really is a problem try cutting off the
points of the branches that the birds attach
their nest to, before they start building.
Our gardens will not be the same without
these colourful residents which are very
much a part of our environment.