Tuesday, May 26, 2020 at 7:48 AM
The Garden Patch
South Streator Illinois
BIRD MURDER?
A murder showed up at my doorstep, literally three feet from my car. A bird had fallen on the cement floor of the carport, dead upon impact. Flies had found the corpse, but I knew it was fresh. I had checked the robin’s nest above the crime scene daily since noticing the nest built on the drain pipe, under the eaves.
A five foot fall shouldn’t kill an immature robin, should it? The small size of the deceased suggested an immature bird. Yet, I have no idea how to identify an immature robin. I had at least three facts. The bird was obviously dead and right underneath the nest. I had noticed a female robin on the nest once, but I scared her into flying away. I assumed that the robin standing sentinel on a nearby post was the same one I scared from the nest.
I first explored the cowbird theory. A cowbird doesn’t build a nest. A cowbird lands in an active nest, any nest of almost one hundred species, and lays an egg. I have seen a picture of a cowbird egg with brown specks among blue robin’s eggs. The cowbirds love robin nests, but robins have a reputation for spoiling the cowbird egg early. Cowbird hatchlings have bad luck too, often easily detected and killed. I wondered if this dead bird belonged to a cowbird mother who had abandoned it? I have to look up the features of cowbird chicks to be sure.
Only one and four robin chicks survive into adulthood. I wondered if another species raided the nest, murdered the chick and vanished. I looked at the small flock of grackles or starlings across the road, a flock fond of a grassy lot. I had heard of attacks on bluebirds enjoying a nicely appointed bluebird box. At Arts Beats and Eats in Royal Oak, Michigan, I heard testimony from a woman who photographed bluebirds and sold bluebird boxes at frugal prices.
She was a pleasant woman with a genteel manner. So when she snapped, “House Sparrows? Kill them. House Sparrows will drive their beaks through the heads of bluebirds,” I was taken aback. “Check your bluebird boxes for house sparrows and kill them! House sparrows are unholy. They’ll even use bluebird feathers in a nest. Worse than cannibals!” She snapped out of it when I asked about her bluebird photographs. Her passion for bluebirds showed in her vivid photographs.
I boned up on robins. Three weeks pass from laying eggs until the immatures leave the nest. What I read indicates that the young leave the nest without being able to fly. A young, flightless robin has to fall to earth and survive? Maybe one of the clutch didn't make the fall? The young have to hide in bushes until learning to fly.
At first, I had worried that the mother robin had abandoned her nest. Robins raise two or three broods every season, building a new nest for each brood. This morning, I was relieved to see a robin on the post. The robin flew off before I had the front door half open. Maybe it was our mother robin, still on the watch?
I have thought about searching the bushes for young robins preparing to fly. I have hesitated because I wonder if mother robin might retaliate, even peck her remaining young to death. As a child, I had gotten too close to a rabbit hutch and the mother did kill her bunnies. It made my mother so unhappy. I wouldn’t want nature to repeat itself. I wanted to be a good naturalist.
In less than a week, the robin couple might move on and the mother will build a second or third nest. I have no idea how late into the robin season we have gone this spring. What if I removed the nest so that another robin might build a nest on top of the drain pipe, under the eaves. How do I know when the time is right to remove the nest? I’m keeping an eye on that nest for signs. Maybe I’ll install a webcam hooked up to the house wireless to document the life of the next resident robins? Maybe this is how Alligator Steve Irwin got started, wondering about alligators?
Robin chick
By Galawebdesign - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4228148
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