I had to move a robin’s nest that had eggs in it and I’m wondering if there is any hope for the unborn robins.
Here is the situation:
I mowed my backyard for the first time this year, in some places the grass was possibly a foot high. I mowed one section under a large tree and noticed that there was a robin’s nest partly buried in the ground but now fully exposed and untouched by the mower. This was also the area a robin a flown away from moments earlier as I approached.
Thinking that this spot fully in the open and on the ground couldn’t be good, I scooped under the nest and moved it about 10 feet away and hid it kind of in some tall weeds/bushes that are up in a raised section of the yard.
Here are my questions:
Will the robins be able to find the nest? Were they watching me move it? Can they put 2 and 2 together? Or does 2 and 2=0 for robins?
If they can, will they try to hatch the eggs where they are?
I’d be more worried about the robins abandoning their young after you touched it. I don’t know anything about birds but I know with some animals, if you mess with their young, they’ll abandon them to die.
They might find the nest. However, birds are most likely to abandon the nest at the egg stage, when they have relatively little investment in the clutch. If they have a bunch of chirping nestlings, they may continue to feed them. But eggs they care less about.
The fact that you moved the nest, even if they find it, indicates that it is in a dangerous location for them. I would consider it unlikely that they would try to continue to incubate under those circumstances.
However, I wouldn’t feel too bad. It’s still very early in the season. Birds frequently lose their eggs to predators, and if it is early enough they will attempt to re-nest and raise a new clutch. So while the robins may have lost some time and energy, they still have the chance to produce young this year.
By the way, what is your location? I think it’s pretty unusual for American Robins to place their nest on the ground - it’s almost always in a bush or tree 5 to 15 feet above the ground. Or are you talking about the European Robin?
I’m in the Seattle Wa. area. I don’t know what kind of robin it was, just caught a quick glimpse of it as it flew away, it’s possible I’m wrong about the type of bird, but based on it’s size it seemed correct. The nest was on the ground right underneath a big tree and we’ve had some high winds in the last 4 weeks, I was assuming it had fallen out of the tree.
last (southern) spring, there were some brown honeyeaters that nested within
a metre of our back door, when the chick was just a few days old, it fell from the nest into a potplant about 1.5 metres below. i was able to retrieve it and placed it back in the nest, all was well as far as the parents were concerned, it flew off exactly a fornight from birth!.
I’m not sure what it might have been, but as I said it’s pretty unlikely that an American Robin would nest on the ground. It would also be unlikely that robins would incubate eggs in a nest that had fallen out of a tree. They would be more likely to abandon it.
On the chance that it is actually the nest of a ground-nesting species, I would suggest moving the nest back to its original location. With this amount of disturbance they are unlikely to come back, but you never know.
Same size as robins eggs that I’ve seen in the past, and have the same slightly spotted appearance, but not the bright blue-greenish color I’ve seen in old opened egg shells, these are more gray.
I wondered that. Robin’s eggs seem pretty study given I found an intact one sitting on a log last spring. It seemed unlikely that the egg was laid there.
