I know why the caged bird sings....

....because it's sat on its nest. There were a few pairs of Little Ringed Plovers, Charadrius dubius, at London Wetland Centre this year. These tiny little wader chaps nest on the islands to be safe from terrestrial predators and the staff help out by putting these cages over the nests to protect them from gulls and corvids.

The plovers can run around in and out of the cage but the larger birds cannot get in. I'd hoped that the cage would help me by providing a static focus point since this was digiscoped at long range. Unfortunately every time I got focus the plovers would start to run around again so all my shots look like this. Nevertheless I thought the use of "cages" was interesting enough to share. As an aside not all Charadrius species are so shy. I recently watched another Charadrius sp. plover mother leading her chicks around a gravel car park where she'd obviously raised them.