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.