Abandoned Nest

The robins in my backyard pear tree alerted me to the nest being built, and they alerted me when the female was sitting on eggs and then feeding young.

Now they are gone, and that silence alerts me the nest is abandoned.

Robin nest, July 31, 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

I first noticed the nest being built by the female on Saturday, July 6, when she flew back and forth with long strands of grass or possibly the spent greenery from the daffodils I had put atop the compost pile a few days before. On July 10 she was sitting in the nest, her head barely above the rim. She wouldn't move until the male signaled he was nearby and then she'd leave for a dinner break.

I looked forward to watching the parents tend to the young, something I could never see when I was watching house wrens going to and from the nest box I hang in the apple tree.

The female returning from a dinner break.
(Margo D. Beller)

On July 26 I noticed a change. Now the male, who had been tending to juveniles from a previous brood, was spending more time at the nest when his mate went off for food, which she did for longer periods of time. He'd stand at the edge, sometimes poking around inside, until the female returned. He'd fly off, she'd stand on the rim, lean down and vigorously move. I imagined young birds, helpless but with mouths open, being force-fed as she regurgitated food directly down their throats. This back and forth went on for a few days.

Meanwhile, we went through days of intense summer heat and humidity, thunderstorms, then days of drier, more comfortable air. Through it all the female was brooding her young. When she sat on eggs, she seemed to be in a daze; when the young hatched, she sat much higher in the nest and was more alert and watchful. I was on the porch one morning when fish crows started calling from trees nearby. Crows, as well as their cousins the jays, will eat baby birds so she sat atop her young and did not move, hiding them amid the tree foliage until the crows flew off.

I can't sit on the porch all the time, unfortunately, especially in very hot and humid weather. But on July 30 I went out in the late afternoon and saw no activity at the nest. I wasn't bothered by this, figuring the parents were off getting food and the young were big enough to sit quietly in the heat unprotected. But I did wonder, and today there continued to be no activity, not even a call from a parent robin.

So I decided to take a closer look.

My attempt to see into the nest (Margo D. Beller)

I don't climb trees. However, I did take an extension pole, attached a paint roller, duct-taped a hand mirror and tried to get it up above the nest to look inside. I was not successful but the fact no parent came screaming at me told me this was no longer an active nest.

What happened?

I could be optimistic and say I miscalculated, the birds were bigger than I thought and all had fledged. But my instinct is it was something more cataclysmic: either a predator (crow? squirrel?) got to the young birds or the heat got to them or the female robin was hit by a car as she was flying low over the road and the young starved.

Nature is cruel, as MH reminded me when I told him about my attempt to look in the nest. I don't know what happened with the house wren nest earlier this year and I don't know what happened with the robins. I do know that eventually the nest will fall apart and drop from the pear tree. Perhaps I'll get a better indication of what happened then.

Saving Water by the Barrel

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 6, 2017, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

"When the well's dry we know the worth of water," said Benjamin Franklin. That is never more true than during the summer.

Thirsty titmouse at hanging water cooler
(Margo D. Beller)

Here in New Jersey, unlike in other years, we've had plenty of water from an overabundance of spring rain. Reservoirs levels are at or over capacity, making it certain we won't need restrictions on watering lawns or plants. But that is not always the case. In many years July into August is a time of brown grass and thirsty flowers. The birds are thirsty, too, when they come to the water cooler, their bills open to release the heat.

Back in 2017 I attended a program where people learned the value of saving water by making rain barrels to store water for those dryer times during the summer.

I was there as an observer and didn't make my own rain barrel. In my yard MH only mows every few weeks and keeps the mower higher so the grass protects itself, leaving our lawn a bit greener than our neighbors' albeit crunchy in spots. My plants do well in drought and only need to be watered once a week with the hose. But I admit that after attending the program I felt guilty about how much water is wasted coming off the roof and pouring over the driveway to the street and down the drain.

As I wrote in 2017:

Dry forsythia and viburnum, 2015 (Margo D. Beller)

One inch of rain pouring off the average suburban house roof -- 800 square feet -- means approximately 600 gallons of water, according to a fact sheet from the Rutgers University NJ Agricultural Experiment Station in New Brunswick. That's enough water for your garden and your lawn twice over.

Wasting water leads to drought restrictions, usually during the hottest part of summer. So this year, instead of over-using the sprinkler or hose, why not consider a way of collecting at least some of that runoff each time it rains -- a rain barrel.

New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary held its third annual program on how to build your own rain barrel, and it is easy to see why this is a popular program.

Not only did those attending learn something about making their gardens more sustainable while saving water, but they were able to use shop skills many might not have realized they had to create a 55-gallon blue plastic rain barrel (donated by Ocean Spray) at a fraction of the cost of what you'll find at your local Do-It-Yourself store..

Alexandra Cavagrotti, Americorp Watershed Ambassador for the region encompassing the Passaic, Rockaway and Whippany rivers in northern New Jersey, said most homes shed water through gutters and leaders down nonporous surfaces such as driveways, where the water picks up lawn chemicals, car substances and other pollutants and runs into street drains and thus down to streams, rivers and, ultimately, the ocean.

House sparrow at water dish (Margo D. Beller)

Rain barrels are a good way of cutting down on some that polluted, wasted water, said Cavagrotti.

Sherman Hoffman program director Stephanie Punnett said the sanctuary has two rain barrels. "When you have 275 acres, water is problematic," she said. The rain barrels "have been a great help with our native planting" program, that includes removal of invasive, non-native plants throughout the sanctuary.

Plus, rain barrels are fun to make.

Certainly the people making their own were enthusiastically having fun using a drill to create a hole for a faucet and one for draining overflow, then caulking the faucet and putting mesh over the donated screen to keep mosquitoes out (standing water is prime mosquito breeding territory in summer).

One woman, who happened to be Cavagrotti's mother, was wielding the drill like a pro, with the barrel steadied by her husband. "I've built whole houses," she told me when I asked if this was her first rain barrel. I can believe it.

"You get such a feeling of satisfaction" from wielding a drill, said another woman. (Having used a drill I know the feeling.)

For those not power tool-inclined, Cavagrotti and several other Ambassadors helped drill the holes. Americorp is a public service program supported by the U.S. federal government, foundations, corporations and other donors. These Ambassadors teach the importance of water to schools and at programs such as Scherman Hoffman's.

When they finished, everyone put their barrels into their pickups, SUVs or sedans (with a little shifting around of seating), to take them home and position them under a downspout (or not -- Scherman Hoffman's barrels are not connected to the roof, said Punnett, because all of the Hoffman Center’s downspouts are connected directly to a groundwater recharge system. The rain barrels are connected to two other buildings on the property). The more creative can even decorate their barrels for use this summer.

Dry lawn, 2015 (Margo D. Beller)

And that's one thing to keep in mind if you want to buy or build your own rain barrel.

Once it's November, no matter how unusually mild the weather, unhook your rain barrel, use up the remaining water, clean the barrel out and store it inside. You don't want a barrel full of ice that might expand and damage your handiwork. According to Cavagrotti, it's best to use your rain barrel from April through October.

Also, while rain water off a roof is all-natural it may not be all-edible. Some roofs are treated with chemicals to keep mold and moss off. Birds and squirrels have been known to leave their mess on roofs.

So while the water flowing from roof to rain barrel may be fine for your lawn or your flowers or even washing your car, don't put it on your vegetable garden or in your pet's water dish or into a bird bath.

Some of the people making their own rain barrels, 2017
(Margo D. Beller)

You can get more information on rain barrels and wise water use from a number of online sources including the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program.

If you don't want to buy or build a rain barrel, there are other ways of using water wisely in your garden this summer.

Use soaker hoses (available at most garden supply stores) that provide an even, small drip to the roots of plants. Install native plants that are accustomed to your area and can survive dry conditions. Plant more trees -- they will not only provide shade from summer heat but they will suck up rain water that would otherwise go down the sewer drain.

Or create a "rain garden," using trees and native plants, that features a depression in the ground for pooling water. There are many websites on how to design a rain garden including that of the Rain Garden Alliance at http://raingardenalliance.org/planting.

Family Time, Again

She is nearly invisible in the messy cup nest she built at the top of my pear tree, her yellow bill showing as she raises her head to look at me. But I am behind glass on my enclosed porch and no threat to her. After taking about a week to put the nest together, she is sitting on three to five blue eggs and will rarely move off them for the next two weeks or so unless she must.

Like the neighborhood children freed from school to run around their yards and play, my yard is filled with the sound of noisy young, in this case birds.

Robin in my pear tree, July 13, 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

The American robin female in her nest is not the only robin in my yard. There are others flying around, many of them juveniles whose breasts are mottled rather than orange to help camouflage them. Their nest was in my large yew hedge. An adult male robin is feeding them. There could be two robin pairs or these juveniles may be an earlier brood of the same female robin in the pear tree. (Robins can have up to three broods, if conditions are right.)

This is the time of year when, if you are looking for them, you'll likely see birds either holding food for young or nesting materials. Those with food will lead you to squawking young, which, when they get a little bigger, will flock after their parents and make themselves very visible.

In my yard, besides the robins, the types of birds followed by young so far have included cardinal, flicker, chipping sparrow, starling, titmouse and grackle, with large flocks of cedar waxwings flying overhead. The other morning I watched a young grackle pull a worm from the grass beneath the apple tree. The bird is completely dull brown while an adult grackle is iridescent, with a bright yellow bill and eyes. When you are a young bird, you need all the help you can get to survive into adulthood.

This old nest was within a wild rose bush I was cutting
back. It was well hid and protected by thorns. (Margo D. Beller)

Bigger birds - jays, gulls, great blue herons, crows - will eat baby birds, which is why you will often see these birds chased off by smaller birds - red-winged blackbirds, mockingbirds, Eastern kingbirds, for instance - protecting their young. Danger can come at any time from soaring raptors and neighbors' prowling cats.

Take the robin in my pear tree. According to the Cornell Ornithology Lab, on average "only 40 percent of nests successfully produce young. Only 25 percent of those fledged young survive to November. From that point on, about half of the robins alive in any year will make it to the next."  And robins are relatively big songbirds, about eight to 11 inches long. 

All these bird families passing through my yard are fascinating to watch. Small chipping sparrows land in the longish grass and seem to disappear except for the young's buzzy contact calls. Larger starlings stick with their parents as they hunt in the grass and in the winter will join with other family groups to create the huge flocks that seem to undulate in the air like a single organism. When the berries on my viburnums, dogwood and other shrubs are ready, the robins and other fruit-eating birds will feast (as will the squirrels). Then, when it turns cooler and the leaves start to fall and the insects die off, many of these birds will fly south to their winter grounds to eat there in preparation for next spring's migration and breeding.

Mother Robin coming back from a food break. When I took this picture the
male flew off to the flood wall. I am guessing he was watching things
while his mate was away. (Margo D. Beller)

Unlike in past years, I am not watching a house wren brood. The nest box I cleared a few weeks ago was visited by a singing male. I was hopeful. However, it didn't attract a mate and didn't build a nest. It used the box as a temporary roost for a few days and hasn't been seen since. But that's the nice thing about the natural world. While there are no house wrens this year, I have a front-row porch seat for when Mother Robin's eggs hatch.