Hello Burt,

Yes yes there would use the lint.Every spring I put out Gog clipping what a friend give me to groom her Poddle.I us a cage where I usual have suet.The birds been using this for years.Why not helping our birds a little out with some nice cushion to make it a little softer to lay in.


Cheers Ruth Sullivan

----- Original Message -----
From: Guttman,Burton
To: Tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 8:30 AM
Subject: [Tweeters] Clothes lint for nests?


I'm known to be a nut on waste reduction and recycling, and I'm a citizen representative on the Thurston County Solid Waste Advisory Committee. So a relative of ours, who lived here for a while and, naturally, used our clothes washer and drier, has challenged me to find a use for clothes lint, the stuff that accumulates on the lint filter of the drier. Well, that's quite a challenge. But then I thought of our little feathered friends and started to wonder: would this stuff be any good as nesting material? The main problem is that the fibers are very short, but birds such as goldfinches use the soft fibers of thistles to line their nests, and maybe other birds could weave in some drier lint. Of course, even one week of clothes washing produces so much lint that it would take quite a few birds to use it, and you understand that this isn't really a serious question about recycling. But I still wonder: if I put this out in the woods here during nesting season, would birds use it?

Burt Guttman
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505 guttmanb at evergreen.edu
Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S. E., Olympia, 98503




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