• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, April 15, 2015

Last week, I got to watch two ovenbirds -- a male and a female -- construct a remarkable home out of mud and grass atop a fence post in a Uruguayan sheep’s pasture.

Lacking hands, these two industrious birds built this nest with their beaks as their only tools -- transporting their building materials beakful by beakful from nearby mud patches, then shaping this crude mortar into an enclosure with walls about two inches thick. When they were finished, their nest (the one seen in the photo accompanying this blog) consisted of a front entrance, a foyer and one cozy back room.

The back room was for the laying and incubation of subsequent eggs, which these ovenbirds zealously guarded against trespassers covetous of the home they had built. Chief among these interlopers were cowbirds, who don’t build their own nests but seek opportunities to penetrate the nests of others to deposit their eggs.

As you have probably guessed by now, I did not travel personally to Uruguay to observe this spectacle. I nevertheless had a front row seat for it, courtesy of TV -- PBS’ “Nature,” to be exact.

The show, seen last Wednesday night on WNET/Ch. 13 in New York, was part one of a special three-part “Nature” series subtitled “Animal Homes.” The series takes a detailed look at the construction of a wide variety of animal domiciles – from birds’ nests to bear dens.

Part one was titled “The Nest.” Part two, airing tonight (Wednesday, April 15), is subtitled “Location, Location, Location.” It examines how animals choose the sites for their homes, basing their selection on the accessibility of building materials, possible neighbors (friendly and otherwise) and other considerations.

Part three, scheduled for next Wednesday (April 22), focuses on species that not only build nests for themselves, but establish dwellings and colonies for entire communities. The episode is subtitled “Animal Cities.”

Among the places you’ll visit if you tune in to watch: The Hebrides Islands off the west coast of Scotland, where puffins cohabit in colonies numbering more than a million birds; and Costa Rica, where you’ll get a close-up look at a colony of leaf-cutter ants whose “ant city” takes up an entire acre and whose population is estimated in the multimillions.

The images these filmmakers manage to capture for these shows, along with the stories they are then able to tell about the lives of wildlife, always elicit the same response: How do they do it? The answer is a combination of patience and high technology. It's the latter that has added new dimensions and unprecedented clarity to nature documentaries in recent years, and this “Nature” miniseries is a stellar example of this trend.

More importantly, though, these are the kinds of TV shows that have always fulfilled the most basic promise of TV -- which is its ability to take you places you cannot go yourself.

Every once in a while, a show comes along to remind us that this is something TV is uniquely suited to do. It is well worth remembering.