What bird killed my baby robins? (1 Viewer)

[jjohns10]

Hello there,

I have a robin that has made a nest on my front door wreath. We haven't used our door for weeks trying to keep her safe. She had laid four eggs and 4 days ago they started to hatch. All four were hatched 3 days ago and they were such cute little things. Now there is only one baby robin and it looks like he's been pecked in the head and neck. It's very sad. I saw a very aggressive looking bird with two skinny long tail feathers and shorter broad tail feathers with white tips flying around. The bird was about the size or a little larger than the mother robin. It was swooping down into our covered porch area, threatening the robin sitting in the nest. Is this the bird that killed the other babies and if so, what type of bird is it and how do I get rid of it? We live in Indiana by the way. Any information would be wonderful.

Thank you so much! -Jill :C

here is the link to our photo blog of our robin family...
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100215077714604.2353846.27313862&type=1&l=5745c49c3b

 

[allamericanbird]

It could have been a blue jay.

 

[Romafree]

How very sad for you xx

 

[bkrownd]

Are you certain a cat didn't get to them? It sounds like this nest is probably only a few feet above the ground, and this would be an easy jump for a cat. If a cat got up to the nest it would attack the nestlings by biting their heads and necks before carrying off the corpses.

Sounds like a poor choice of nesting location, either way. You could try to partially enclose the location so it can't be watched so easily. Might not work at this point. Otherwise, robins exist to eat and be eaten, so it's just business as usual in the bird world.

 

[MJHamilton]

Are you certain a cat didn't get to them? It sounds like this nest is probably only a few feet above the ground, and this would be an easy jump for a cat. If a cat got up to the nest it would attack the nestlings by biting their heads and necks before carrying off the corpses.

Sounds like a poor choice of nesting location, either way. You could try to partially enclose the location so it can't be watched so easily. Might not work at this point. Otherwise, robins exist to eat and be eaten, so it's just business as usual in the bird world.

I don't know what bird that is, but I think we can rule out a cat. A cat could certainly make the jump, but it would probably have caused more disturbance to the wreath and nest in its scrambling to reach it.

 

[nikiapple]

Hello there,

I have a robin that has made a nest on my front door wreath. We haven't used our door for weeks trying to keep her safe. She had laid four eggs and 4 days ago they started to hatch. All four were hatched 3 days ago and they were such cute little things. Now there is only one baby robin and it looks like he's been pecked in the head and neck. It's very sad. I saw a very aggressive looking bird with two skinny long tail feathers and shorter broad tail feathers with white tips flying around. The bird was about the size or a little larger than the mother robin. It was swooping down into our covered porch area, threatening the robin sitting in the nest. Is this the bird that killed the other babies and if so, what type of bird is it and how do I get rid of it? We live in Indiana by the way. Any information would be wonderful.

Thank you so much! -Jill :C

here is the link to our photo blog of our robin family...
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100215077714604.2353846.27313862&type=1&l=5745c49c3b

The photos are excellent. That seems sort of unusual for a robin to build a nest in such an exposed location. No protection at all for the babes. There are a lot of bully birds such as blackbirds, grackles, starlings, brown-headed cowbirds etc. From the description you gave not knowing the main body color, for some reason I think it may have been a Northern Mockingbird. I live in Mississippi and we seem to have a lot of the same species as you do in Indiana. I don't know of any solution to rid you of the naughty bird unfortunately. Given the outcome, the robin more than likely won't reuse that nest.

 

[fugl]

Sounds like a Blue Jay (white tips to outer tail feathers) which--like most other jays--are notorious predators on both eggs & nestlings. Someone told me once that she watched a Western Scrub-jay pop a succession of robin nestlings--some still alive & kicking--down the throats of her own young, cleaning out an entire robin nest in a matter of a few hours.

 

[nikiapple]

Sounds like a Blue Jay (white tips to outer tail feathers) which--like most other jays--are notorious predators on both eggs & nestlings. Someone told me once that she watched a Western Scrub-jay pop a succession of robin nestlings--some still alive & kicking--down the throats of her own young, cleaning out an entire robin nest in a matter of a few hours.

You could be right but I thought with the coloring of a Blue Jay that it would be easily identified. Sometimes immature males and/or females and also different times of the year can look totally different in species which sometimes makes identifying them difficult.

 

[jmepler]

Sounds like a Blue Jay to me too.

There is nothing that you can do to "get rid" of them. They are protected the same as your robins are. It is sad to see, but it is part of nature. The robins probably will learn not to choose such a visible nest site in the future.

Mike

 

[coal tit]

i hate magpies for the same reason over here and they are corvids and are not protected but might as well be giveing all what you can do to stop them i rank
them as the biggest pests for song birds and the cleverest as well they remind
me of those dinosaur "raptors" in jurassic park and sometimes when you hear
them calling and talking to one another they almost could be out of sight well
in fact as birds are the last liveing relative of the dinosaurs i class " them " as
the real thing in the bird world here, our european robins that have nested here
in my garden have faired better than yours as they are a smaller bird than yours
and ours like ivy around them which i leave plenty of for them to nest in on one
of our fences they have reared a number of broods this last number of years in
our garden and nearby we did not have them nest here this year but we had a
added bonus as a pair of dunnocks reared there brood since or one of them in our garden
they have a open nest and were in some moss rose`s the young were quite noisy
and as far as i know were successful the first open top nest apart from the robins
and in less cover than them since 1993 when a pair of jenny wrens built a nest
and reared there young in a open position in a bay tree .

 

[Jake Wall]

After robin’s nest has been attacked and babies have been killed, is it wise to take down nest or leave it there on the perch at the back of our garage for the next robin?