VIDEOS & PICTURES: New exhibition by wildlife artist Robert Fuller to showcase the home-building habits of birds

YOU'D think they'd have had a bit more sense. An old teapot, maybe. A worn-out pair of hob-nailed boots. Even a rusty kettle.

But trying to build a nest in the spare wheel on the back of a Toyota landcruiser?

Wildlife artist Robert Fuller had only parked the car next to the porch of his home at Fotherdale Farm in the Yorkshire Wolds late the night before.

When he got up next morning, a pair of robins were flitting to and from the wheel with bits of twig and moss clutched in their beaks.

They would perch on the wheel's trim, before disappearing through one of the gaps. He could just make out the untidy beginnings of a nest taking shape inside the wheel.

This left him with a quandary. Should he leave the car undisturbed while the pair built their nest, laid their eggs, and raised a clutch of young? Or should he move it now, straight away, before they really got started and had the chance to relocate?

He decided, reluctantly, on the latter. "I need to use the car," he says.

The robins aren't the only birds setting up home at Fotherdale Farm as spring approaches. On a beautiful March morning, with the sun shining from a clear sky, the air is alive with birds flitting, bobbing, trilling and warbling. They love weather like this, Robert says: it is perfect for nest-building.

Birds seem drawn to Robert. If he stood in his garden, you'd almost expect them to settle on his shoulders and his outstretched arms. Perhaps they do.

Partly, it is the nest boxes he has placed everywhere. Some are hand-built boxes tucked under eaves for swallows or hidden on ivy-covered walls; some are woven pouches favoured by wrens; others are old boots or kettles or teapots scattered strategically around. They make great nesting sites – and they look good in his paintings, too, he says.

Also he ensures there is always plenty of food for them. The bill mounts up, he says wryly. "I buy bird seed by the pallet."

But you'd also like to feel that many birds come here because they are welcome, and that the people living here are no threat.

Fotherdale Farm is perched on a high flank of the Wolds above Thixendale, with views across steep-sloped valleys to hilltops on the other side. This where Robert has his studio and gallery, and where he and his family live.

Since they moved in in 1998, they have planted hundreds of trees and shrubs around the house. And Robert has done all he can to encourage birds and wildlife.

He seems almost to know the birds personally. In his porch is a pair of wrens, flitting in and out of a lovely woven nesting pouch he installed specially to tempt them.

"A male wren will often build several nests and then take his mate for a tour of the garden to show her his handiwork," he says.

"I guess it's a tactic that a sharp estate agent might employ. Show her one and she could turn it down. But show her three... he'll be a winner whichever one she chooses."

Outside, a tree sparrow sits high on an eave of the house. He's keeping a watchful eye on a nest box Robert has fixed on the house lower down. "They like to sit high up to 'prospect'", Robert says. "He's deciding that nest box is his."

Further down the drive, next to a vine-covered wall, another nest-that has been colonised by a pair of blue tits. They're bobbing in and out, busily building their nest. Whenever he walks down the drive, Robert says, they give a little, subtle alarm call, as if to let him know they're there and that the box is theirs.

Everywhere you walk, there are nests and nest-boxes, and the whirring, flitting movement of tiny figures darting through the air to alight on wall or branch.

Around the house, they are mainly small birds: tits, finches, swallows, robins. But further up the hill, a pair of kestrels have nested, Robert says. And in nest-boxes placed in a row of sycamores a few hundred yards away, there are tawny owls and little owls.

Robert has been observing all these birds for years. But more recently, he's started placing tiny cameras in selected nesting boxes so he can watch the behaviour of birds via a live feed on a screen in his study.

He's seen some incredible things, he says: including tawny owls trying out a nest box for size, then shuffling around inside it to make a shallow hollow – called a 'scrape' – in the soft material on the floor of the box. That will be their nest, he says. "It is to stop the eggs rolling around."

His knowledge of how birds build their nests is second to none. Robins, he says, take two to three days to build a nest out of leaves and moss and bits of grass.

"They start off looking quite untidy, then somehow, once they start to build the cup shape, it suddenly has this tight form to it."

Long-tailed tits are master builders. They make nests intricately woven out of moss, feathers and lichen – and use cobwebs to bind them together.

"The cobweb allows the nest to expand as the young grow," Robert says. The birds use cobwebs as a kind of 'Lycra' to make stretchy nests. Robert regularly sees the tits gathering webs around his garden.

"They hang around crevices in the wall, get the cobwebs in their beaks, and head off," he says.

Other birds, such as goldfinch, build their nests high in the top branches of trees, where they whip around in the wind. It seems an odd thing to do, but there's a good reason for it, Robert says.

"It keeps them safe from predators – weasels, stoats and rats and so-on."

Robert has quite a collection of photographs and paintings of birds during the nesting season. He'll be bringing some of these together in an exhibition, Easter Nests, which will run at his gallery from March 28 to April 26.

The exhibition will focus on a new collection of paintings of unusual nesting sites, including a brood of swallows brought up in a storm lantern and a robin which used an old teapot for a nest.

There will also be live video links to nesting birds of prey, a display of nesting materials for you to feel – and a chance to put your knowledge to the test by looking at a selection of old nests and guessing which birds built them.

If you're lucky, you might even see a tawny owl lay a clutch of eggs live on screen via Robert's video link. "That would be a glimpse of the season's most precious eggs," he says.

• Easter Nests runs at the Robert Fuller gallery, Fotherdale Farm, Thixendale, from March 28 to April 26. On Easter Sunday, April 4, there will also be a special falconry event. More information from robertfuller.com