Robins in trouble? (1 Viewer)

[Wildwoman]

I'm disturbed by a trend I've noticed in the last few weeks. A robin built a nest and laid eggs in one of our trees, but I found the nest on the ground with broken egg shells by it.

Then I found a dead baby robin during one of our walks through the neighborhood.

My sister, in Southern Illinois, has a nest as well, but over two days, two babies were found dead beneath it.

Today, I found a broken egg on the street.

Is there something going on with Robins? Are they having difficulty nesting this year? Anyone?

 

[fugl]

I wouldn't think so. There are lots of wrecked nests/dead nestlings at this time because it's the height of the breeding season & because only a relatively small proportion of the eggs laid normally survive to adulthood (if this weren't so the world would soon be swimming in robins!).

The broken egg you found on the street--were there traces of the contents or was it merely an empty half-shell? As you may know, robins, like many other birds, often carry off the shell fragments immediately after the chick hatches. They generally dispose of each shell half separately, dropping it on the ground some distance from the nest. In the suburb where I live in Reno I've started encountering these fragments almost daily the last week or so (& the robin nesting in my pear tree is doing just fine so far in spite of all the cats, scrub-jays & raccoons in the neighborhood)

 

[Wildwoman]

The egg I found today was almost whole, but I could see inside and there was an embryo in there.

It's a jungle out there, I know.