I wouldn't worry about any scent that you may have left behind, birds don't have a very good sense of smell. However, I would not continue to visit the nest - the robins might decide to abandon this nest and start a new one elsewhere if there is frequent disturbance to the site.

Thank you for sharing the photo - it is very cool to see. Such a wonderful sign of spring.

I don't think it is true. Biologists capture and band baby birds and put them back in the nest. They sometimes weigh then and draw blood for research.

Yes, both of the above are right. And, robins tend to build their nests, and raise their babies successfully, right on people's doorsteps literally. On porch lights, on porch rafters, in hanging baskets ...

Now most birds are not nearly as tolerant of human activity around their nests as that, so it's not a blanket statement by any means. And, even robins will draw the line at dogs and cats around their nests.

Repeated, continual, direct disturbance will drive them off, but a one-time photo session should not. Great photo by the way!

Oh, i'm very relieved, you guys! Thank you. And you're right, reg_pnw7, about their lack of hesitation to build near a house - there's another nest that's a work in progress in a potted tree beneath my back deck. I was about to plant it, noted the nest, and slowly backed away. :) I guess i'll wait till the fall to plant it up, but meanwhile, i'll relax a little bit about moving around it.

I think it originated by parents who wanted their kids to leave the nests alone. Same for green apples will make you sick. Parents wanted the kids to wait until they were ripe.

Sorry, but we had an unfortunate experience where we just peeked into a nest in a vine under our deck, we did not touch anything, and later found the nest had been abandoned, all the eggs still unhatched as when we had looked in. So I disagree with the above.

Hemnancy, you say you didn't touch anything, just peeked in a vine under your deck, and you blame a peek on the abandonment. The connection is rather tenuous in my opinion.

More likely the adult bird was injured or killed.

I bet a human fist would.

I don't know about robins but wrens are persistent little birds, twice I've had to move their nests. Once when she built her nest in the hitch of our boat trailer, I took her nesting material and placed it in a coconut shell birdhouse and hung from a window frame and just a couple of days ago found a little wren had built her nest in another unique place, an old wood turned reject of DHs, I had to move that off a shelf as it was propped up beside my watering can. It's now lodged in a clematis vine which is a much safer place for her to raise her young, this little wren didn't blink an eye, just continued to feather her nest.

A......

A friend has some boxes in the yard he built for bumblebees. A queen got into one before he had put it where he wanted it. When he moved it with her inside she flew out and went back to where the box had been, looking for the nest. (So he put the box back and she went back in).

I thought that was kind of interesting, that it would remember the location of the nest and give that preference over where the nest itself was.

Hey there - I'm barging in and bumping this up in hopes you can answer a related question. We have a robin's nest in our flowering quince with two near-fledglings in it. The parents have allowed us to peek in frequently. Today there's been strong wind and the nest is tipped sideways, with one baby in it and the other sitting on top of the nest. I know Mother Nature doesn't need help, but it's hard to resist trying. I wondered if I could pick up the top baby, reposition the nest, and put the baby back into it? What do you think?

Thanks,
Pat

Maybe the parents are inept nesters and it would therefore be better to allow them to fail to pass their genes on. Natural selection in action.

Pat........yes.........you can reposition the nest and move the baby.

The instinctive drive to take care of their chicks is much stronger than their concern of human scent!

Probably can't smell that anyway.

I used to be the Education Director at the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge and we got this question a lot.

From everything I have been told, read, and experienced, human touch will not cause problems as long as it's not excessive.

By the way, this is the time of year we start finding those little ones falling out of nests. Don't be afraid to pick them up and put them back, Mom and Dad will continue to care for them unless there is something wrong and they were intentionally pushed out (natural selection at work). If you can't reach the nest try to put the "baby" under a bush near the nest on the ground and hope no other critters can find it. Parents will continue to feed and care for it there (usually!).

On a final note, if you find a bird that seems injured, before doing anything else try just putting it in a shoe box lined with a towel with the cover on for a couple of hours. Don't peak! Sometimes they just need some "recovery time" in the dark after an incident. After a couple hours, open the box, carefully lift it out and hold your hand open. Nine times out of ten it will fly away!

Hope that helps, just some old education from an old memory!

Linda

If anyone is still around, I have another nest & egg question. A junco built a nest in a hanging basket on my front porch. It about scared me to death when it flew out as I was watering the basket a couple weeks ago, and I got a good scolding! At that point, there were no eggs. A few days later, there was one egg, but I wasn't seeing the bird around anymore and thought perhaps she had abandoned the nest. Then a few days after that, the egg was gone. Can they move their eggs? Surely they don't lay eggs, hatch them and push the kid out in the space of a few days? Right now I'm wondering if something got the egg, despite the nest being very well hidden. Any guesses?

Something probably got it. It's also possible the hen, or another bird, put more nesting material on top of the egg and buried it.
Also, a larger bird could have pick it up and carried it off to eat.

Birds nesting in hanging baskets don't fare well if you have any cats in the area. DM had such a setup and the chicks and hen were often killed each year. Once she hung up a wren nestbox all has been well!

Songbirds are prey, the turnover is high. Most don't live more than a few years. I was stooped over weeding once in the back here (an increasingly rare occurrence!) and looked up in time to see an adult Cooper's hawk streak by and pluck a junco off a twig near the ground, probably not even 12' in front of me, and disappear with it into a rhododendron. This all happened in an instant, I'm sure the little guy (or gal) never knew what hit it. Afterward the twig vibrated for awhile and some junco feathers floated down from it to the ground.

Visited the docs office today, while I was waiting outside with my son, a woman asked if I wanted to see some baby birds in the ground bushes next to the building wall. There were 3 good size babies just ready to fledge. She told me some tree cutters came and were trimming the tree branches where they cut one branch with the nest on it. (*sses) they just violated the migratory bird act

The nest was moved more than 10 feet away to ground level in a 2 ft shrub, and I never saw the mom come to feed them nor did I hear them chirp at all. The woman said they been there for a couple of days now with no problems. I had to leave to go home, but decided to come back after work at night to check on them and feed them if possible. I wet some pieces of bread, but they were all huddled together tucked down and quiet as can be. They didn't budge to eat. I will go in the morning to check on them. I hate to see life perish from man's involvement. Any help on this would be great. I will try to feed fruit and worms at best.

Check the site below for a wildlife rehabilitator near you. You can also call the Audubon Society to see if there's a rescue near you.

If you're sure the hen is not around, then gather the babies and take them to a wildlife rescue. It's unusual for the hen to abandon chicks and she could have been roosting nearby when you went by tonight, but if something has happened to her then they will die.

Don't expect them to eat for you. They don't recognize the food you're offering and you need to know what species they are so that they're fed their natural diet. They also may not be old enough to eat on their own yet.

Hopefully by early morning the hen has moved them to a safer place, but if they're not old enough to fledge, then they're not going anywhere.

Here is a link that might be useful: Wildlife rescue

i have a robin nest with 4 eggs in it in a bush right next to my porch- i have 10 kids so whenever someone goes outside the robin bird flys away..will this cause the robin to abandon its eggs??

Likely not

What many are not addressing is that your visits to a nest are not unobserved. Crows and othe birds will watch what you are doing or at least notice a nest they may not have otherwise noticed when you are mucking about with it. They later come in and prey upon the eggs or nestlings. Crow predation is natural and normal, but your role in causing it, not so normal. If your visit/uncovering of the nest is accidental then so be it, but visiting it purposely should be avoided. Also, tree rats and squirrels have incredibly good senses of smell and both prey on bird nests.

Birds are far less likely to abandon a nest once the young have hatched. They have invested far more time/resources into it by that point.

I have a nest on top of a ladder under my covered porch. (We had one there last year also-5 chicks hatched and flew the coop!!) When I started noticing robins in the yard this spring, I put the ladder back in the same place and it built a nest in two days!! A few days later, I peeked in and their was 2 eggs. I checked again a few days later and there were 2 more. It has been a very rainy cold spring in our area. About a week later, she started visiting her nest less and less. It's now been 2 days since I have seen her!! I'm so sad. What could have happened?? What should I do with the nest and eggs now?

I have a robin building her nest on the back side of our basketball backboard. The nest is literally opposite of the hoop with an acrylic see-through backboard. While I love to see this sign of spring, my kids will have a hard time not playing. 2 questions: 1. If I keep my kids away from playing, how long will it take for her to have her eggs and raise her babies and 2. If I do allow them to play, would it scare her away? What should I do?

Just found a fledgling on the ground below it's nest. I have a forty foot pine tree and the nest is about two feet from the top. I got a ladder,climbed up to the top and put her back in the nest. After about five minutes the mother came back to the nest with a partial worm so I say it's a myth.

Susan,

They'll fledge at 2 weeks. The reason I know, we had a nest just outside the kitchen window. I took images & brief videos every 2 days.

I have a robin's nest under my sundeck. My dog has stopped going out in the back yard to pee or chase balls etc. She has always loved going out back, but due to her being harassed by the robin.s she has not ventured off the sundeck for the last two weeks. Any suggestions?

Kim G.

Kim, your dog will get over it ...
In about 6 - 7 weeks the chicks will have left the nest.
This is a Robins nest I found out my back yesterday ?:^]

Lyradane, about how big are those eggs? They are not American Robin eggs, they would be blue. Those look like Oregon Junco eggs, they nest on the ground.

They are a light blue ... and are quiet small.
The picture isn't the best, I was trying to keep my distance.
I'm in Ireland, County Limerick.
I'm 99% sure they are Robin eggs.
I've seen her parading up and down the same route the last month and now she spends must of the time on the eggs ?:^]

Oops, I am so sorry...Okay, so you are Ireland, my bad, I thought you were posting from the Pacific Northwest because 1. this is the Pacific Northwest Forum and 2. our robin eggs don't look like that! LOL :-) The European Robin Erithacus rubecula, is a beautiful bird, about half the size of our American Robin(Turdus migratorius) Thank you for sharing the look at this nest, I had never seen one of your species.

I had an interesting situation at our house. Bought a flower planter and left it on our front porch about chest high off the porch. I saw a bird's nest appear a couple weeks later but never saw a bird so I tossed the nest into the bushes to mulch. Then I saw the flowers were trampled and looked to see why and found 3 Robin's eggs in the flower bed. I used utensils to retrieve the nest from the bushes and carefully laid the 3 eggs into the nest. All the while the mama Robin was squawking at me. I checked and saw the bird returned to the nest and was doing some tidying up. Then low and behold she reclaimed the nest. Later that same day I saw 4 eggs as she apparently had one in reserve. She is nesting nicely now and we can't wait to see her little hatchlings come to life. I did handle the nest by hand at first when I tossed it but who knows if the bird cared. It makes sense that birds don't have a sense of smell.

A bird (friend said it was a robin) build a nest in the bucket of our wishing well. The eggs hatched and their were 5 baby birds in it. They started growing their feathers and I thought they were doing well. A cat was laying on the rim of the well so I brought some chicken wire and put it all the way around the well with enought space for the mother to fly in and out. She did this for 2 days and then abandoned the babies and they died. Why??????

May have been abandonment if you saw this adult bird in the yard but it would no longer come to the nest; otherwise, the bird may have disappeared for other reasons.

Why??????

Maybe the mother was killed herself.

Recently I watched a female robin size up a potential nesting site in a heavily pruned and trained pear tree. I was standing nearby, out in the open and she looked back at me multiple times as she worked her way up through the branches and then to where she tried out a little enclosed space, turning around in it like a hen.

I have a robin's nest on a 3rd floor porch that I don't use. For the past week or so there were 3 blue eggs and I could see the mama with them every day. Today I peaked at them and noticed one egg was out of the nest but the mama was still sitting on the other 2. I'm not sure if I should put it back in her nest or just leave them alone. I've been very careful to not disturb them by opening the back door or anything. Any advice on what I should do?