Glacier Birds

High in the Andes among frozen glaciers, where virtually nothing survives, a small and plump, blue-gray feathered bird lays eggs and raises their young. It is the only bird, other than emperor penguins, known to nest on ice—the most ill-suited of environments for raising young ones. The species known as the white-winged diuca-finch ( Diuca speculifera ) inhabits the high mountain meadows in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. The diuca finch belongs to the large Emberizidae family, members of which are known to breed on the Arctic tundra, although only the diuca finch is known to build nests directly on the brutally cold ice. Photo: BBC The unusual behavior was first discovered in 2003 by University of Massachusetts Amherst geoscientist Douglas Hardy, during a trip to the Peruvian Andes. Hardy was startled to find several intact bird’s nests perched atop a glacier nearly 19,000 feet above sea level. One of them contained abandoned eggs. With each return to the glacier, Hardy saw more nests and even managed to photograph the bird. Back home, his 9-year-old son, Spencer, an avid birder, spent hours poring over the photos and identifying species with the help of books. When his father returned from the site with feathers found around the nests, the Hardys got a conclusive answer from a bird expert at the Smithsonian Institution: the nest belonged to diuca finches. In 2008, Douglas Hardy published a paper about his findings on the Wilson Journal of Ornithology. The paper was co-authored by his son, a grade-school student. Hardy made many trips to the Andes, but all he found was abandoned nests. It wasn’t until 2014, when the first active bird nests were observed on a glacier. The nests are bulky structure in the form of a cup, made of grass, twigs and feathers, and can weigh up to half a pound. The bottom is about 10 inches thick, and that’s about as much insulation the eggs receive.