Today was Day 17 for the house finch nest with eggs-which did not hatch. I suspect the female moved on, probably because of too many intrusions. I removed the nest and eggs.
You’d think they’d know better than to build a nest in a fake Christmas tree in the first place.
It has been said:
You cannot keep birds from flying over your head but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.
Martin Luther
But you can’t keep birds from nesting in your artificial Christmas tree on your front porch.
Yesterday, we noticed 4 eggs in the Robins’ nest. They take
about 14 days to incubate and it just so happens time’s up today.
Right on cue the eggs started cracking this morning. It
takes all day and it was well after 3:00 PM before there was the tiniest
pinhole in the third egg. Two chicks were squirming around when I finally
called it a day around 4:30 PM.
This will have to be continued…. Hope it’s not raining tomorrow.
We have a couple of brand new birds’ eggs in what may be a second nest by the robin pair. Now that made me wonder about whether or not the first nest under our deck was a decoy or dummy nest. You probably won’t believe me, but I thought of that before I googled it.
What got me wondering was the nest the robins build under our deck about a week ago and which they seemingly abandoned. See the progress in the video:
My last picture of the first robins’ nest showed that it was empty.
There was only one egg that ever turned up in this nest.
And then we found the new robins’ nest in our front yard crab apple tree.
a messy and very obvious robins’ nest
I wondered if the nest under our backyard deck was a dummy or decoy nest, maybe to discourage a persistent birdwatcher. I checked the web and found a short article on Sialis, “Dummy and Abandoned Nests.” Since Google identified the site as “Not secure,” I can just summarize that the author (who is not identified), reports that some males build nests to provide the female with a number of choices. She picks one and finishes the nest–much more neatly.
Some birds build decoy nests because they might have been scared by a possible predator in the area–like a large black crow in our area, which actually did make off with an entire clutch of House Finch nestlings only a week ago.
I found another web site that essentially gave the same explanation and both mentioned somebody named Benjamin E. Leese, who wrote about this topic in something called BlueBird Journal, Summer 2018, p.14 and 15. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the article, possibly because it’s a print journal and not available on line.
Another thing I wonder about: if the crab apple nest is the real McCoy and the under-the-deck nest was a decoy (hey, those rhyme), the problem with the crab apple nest is that, when approached from the back, it’s wide open to flying predators.
front door
back door
Anyway, both nests were done in a couple of days, although the crab apple nest probably was done after the under-the-deck model. I’m pretty confident that the breeding pair built both of them. I know they all look alike, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, evidence or no.
Male has a black head; female has a grayish head
This reminds me of another nest that robins built on our property a few years ago, this one right between our house and the rail of our deck. It was a real Hoorah’s Nest!
Big day on the psychiatry consult service. So, this is a short post today because I’m pooped. I logged 2.8 miles and 35 floors on the step counter and here’s a picture to prove it.
Step counter log today. I’m feeling it tonight.
The other bit of news is that the cardinal hatchlings are here—at least two of them anyway. One egg is still unhatched. The house finches are still in their eggs. And there are no eggs in the robin’s nest yet.
baby cardinals and one egg to hatch…
We were a little surprised. We weren’t expecting them to
hatch for about another week.
Since my last post about our birds, we’ve had some new developments. The robins actually have a pretty fine nest now under our deck. I managed to get a blurry snapshot of mama robin actually sitting in the nest. I’ve also caught sight of a portly male cavorting with her on our porch rail. Early this morning the nest was empty.
Broody robin?
Empty nest…so far.
There’s an odd, brownish egg amongst the house finch clutch. I’m not sure what that means, if anything. Maybe it’s the same as brown or white chicken eggs. E.B. White wrote an essay entitled “Riposte,” (in White, E. B. (1999). Essays of E.B. White. New York, HarperPerennial), which treated the difference in some detail. The general idea was that brown eggs are more “natural” than white ones because they are suggestive of the country. However, the last paragraph of the essay mentions a farmer who planned to promote green eggs and who knew of a hen who could lay them.
See that brown egg?
That reminds me. Later today, I noticed some pretty large green eggs, not just in the robin’s nest, but in a few other places too. Robins don’t lay eggs as big as my head and they generally are not green; they’re robin’s egg blue as the saying goes. As for who laid them, I think I spotted the culprit out in the garden.
What the…?
The culprit!
There are still just 3 cardinal eggs. Mama cardinal lets me get pretty close to the nest these days before she thunders off. She tries to hide behind leaf and junk. And papa is stand-offish as usual.
Hiding
Shy
My wife is pretty busy in the garden and pointed out that I don’t have any shots of the pansies. They’re a sure sign of spring, along with the daffodils and tulips—and cavorting birds leading to many eggs.
I just can’t figure how some birds ever get the nest-building
job done. It’s mind-boggling how clueless some of them are. And it’s no wonder—they’re
all bird brains trying to figure out something that they obviously don’t have much
more than bare instinct to go on.
Robins are some of the worst nest builders around. About 4
years ago, they tried to build a nest in between our deck rail and the house.
It was the most hilarious Hoorah’s nest we ever saw!
This year they’re trying once again to build a nest
underneath our deck. Don’t they get it? That’s what trees are for.
We’ve got a bird’s eye view of the egg-laying prowess of a
house finch and a cardinal, in the front yard and the back yard respectively.
We don’t understand how the cardinal lost one of her eggs. She just laid a
replacement.
Funny thing about cardinals and house finches. We see the
male house finch feeding his mate all the time. The papa cardinal is a rare
visitor to the nest; I sometimes wonder if mama has trouble with laying enough
eggs because she’s underfed.
And the eggs of the house finches are not what we expected.
They’re creamy white, not pale blue. Guide books are not always right, I guess.
We’ll keep checking on the robin’s nest building progress. I’m skeptical, but I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.
Let’s get ready to rumble! It’s an egg laying contest. The
competition is underway and let’s face it—the house finch has the title tails
down.
As of last Friday, the house finch had 5 white eggs in the nest, which is a typical clutch. The cardinal is probably going to end up with only two, after losing one egg somehow. Usually, the number is between 3-4.
House Finch clutch
Cardinal clutch
None of the house finch eggs are the expected pale blue color—all creamy white.
But how many will actually hatch? And more importantly, how many will fledge? Also, it looks like the chipping sparrow will have some commentary about the matter because it continues to hang out and make a lot of noise.
Chipping sparrow has an opinion…
We’ll probably know the hatching result in another 12 days or so. Fledging numbers will take another couple of weeks. We can see the action in the house finch nest from our front window. We can peek into the cardinal’s nest from our back window. The competition is keen.
Drab streaks are in.
My hair sticks up more.
Anything can happen. Last year, I think a cat might have made off with at least one of the baby robins who hatched from a nest in the same tree the cardinals are in this year. We don’t know for sure if either of the two chicks actually fledged. I’ll keep you posted.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 