That’s just peak strategy. The birds will probably try and make more gold in the future. By bringing the nest back, the birds will unknowingly being more gold to his pile. The babies will grow up to be his personal gold thieves
Hm... You know, they might be a good bit of security, maybe even treasure collectors later on? They will loudly protest when someone comes close to the hoard, and if they find a shiny while out and about, it gets added to the hoard.
Dragon: "For the record. I'm not doing this to be nice or anything dumb like that. You all are officially part of my horde." Baby bird: "*PEEP!*" Dragon: "Yeah, yeah. You're welcome..."
In most fantasy lore dragons like to "collect" living beings too Either from them being useful to keep around (like kobolds, crows, and golems) or their just neat (mages, bards, frogs) Even giant reptilian cats get lonely sometimes
Reminds me of the time i tried to talk a green dragon out of robbing my party by explaining that the real value my adventurer had was his skills the dragon agreed, thats how that charecter ended up as the dragons personal assistant. Dnd can really be unexpected sometimes.
Birds would be a good alarm system for a hoard. They also provide a symbiotic relationship with larger predators. They get nice place to raise kids, dragon gets alarm system. Potentially more shinies.
A hoard crow would be a neat D&D creature. Opal, gold, or silver in color. Makes its nests near dragon hoards feeding off the scraps of adventurers that stray too close. Main use alarm for dragons and a homing beacon towards hoards. If you catch one easily it was trying to be caught.
Reminds me of a classic tabletop story, where the PCs tricked a dragon into becoming the lord of a village, arguing that this way, he could collect taxes and grow his hoard without fighting. Then, all the other villages wanted in on the deal in exchange for protection, and then the dragon got crowned king and defended them all, because he recognized all the people under him as part of his hoard, and nobody was allowed to touch his hoard. It's one of those iconic stories, along with the paladin that killed an orc warchief by rolling so bad, he got caught up in the critical fumble and got beheaded, or the barbarian that got his head cut open, and by rolling a bunch of nat twenties, he convinced the DM to let him use his own brain as a projectile weapon, only to fumble the last roll and accidentally kill the party's mage with it.
