Nest building, the forgotten behaviour

•Nest building is a useful model for investigating physical cognition.•Nest building by birds involves changes in dexterity and experience-dependent changes in decision making.•A number of parts of the brain are active during nest building.

In the last decade tool manufacture in birds has transformed the landscape of animal cognition. As tool manufacture, however, is rare and practised by species that are not commonplace it is not a particularly useful model for investigating the evolution of physical cognition. On the basis of recent evidence, we argue that nest building, which bears considerable phenotypic resemblance to tool making, is more useful for examining not only the role that cognition may play in construction behaviours, but also the neural underpinning of those behaviours and, ultimately their evolution. We substantiate our view with recent evidence that building by birds involves changes in dexterity, is experience-dependent and involves activity in, at least, motor, reward and social network brain regions as well as in the cerebellum.