We wish that robins did not read. Last Friday, nest searching, I got to see just how much higher the second nests were than the first. Yeow! All three nests that I found in my two and a half hour search that morning were well above the roofs of the nearest houses, and all were relatively difficult to find and ultimately it was behavior that gave them away, they didn't just jump out at me as I strolled down the street.
The first nest I saw the female robin fly to several times before I became suspicious and trained my binoculars on her flight path, shocked to see a nest up so high:
By the time I got to looking for my second nest I was already pretty discouraged. I found it by following a female robin who flew into this tree and did not come back after several minutes, so I knew there was a nest there but it took me awhile to pinpoint where it was. In fact even after finding it, I still couldn't see it from the street:
But from below I finally found it:
Not convinced? Here it is up close. I showed it to my advisor (a.k.a Tarzan) today and he does not think it is accessible since it is so far out on such a flimsy little branch and there are no branches directly above it that one can use to take one's weight off the lower branch. That is saying a lot for him. He asks that we try to find some nests at this site that are a little lower. Yeah right, I joked that I would stop looking up and following the robins based on their behavior, and only check for nests by looking at shrubs and trees under ten feet. Sure.
The third nest I found when I heard a female robin giving the characteristic robin alarm call. I know this call painfully well because it is the call a female robin gives out when I go into a nest to remove nestlings to weigh and band them. I always feel bad for causing so much stress to the parents. Once I heard this call, I was pretty sure there was a nest in the tree it was coming from, though it took me awhile to spot it. I saw where there was a robin and several grackles and after looking there for a few minutes finally saw the nest. Again, it was really high up:
Really, see:
So far at this site the only nest that we know is active and that we can easily reach is in a small blue spruce in someone's front yard. I don't have any close-ups because we don't have permission yet to go onto their property (one more wrinkle in the challenges to accessing a nest). They don't answer their door-- please, please answer the door next time cause it's all we've got right now. I don't hold out a lot of hope for it though. The last nest in this neighborhood that was in a tiny blue spruce (the one that had five eggs that I posted a picture of with the post title "Overachiever!") we checked today to find only one egg and no female robin in sight. Nests that low are very vulnerable to predation by mammals as well as the usual suspects, the crows, blue jays and grackles. One active nest is not nearly enough so I'm sure we'll attempt climbing some of the other super high ones. I can't wait.
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