I have been watching a pair of robins build their nest in a disused, ivy-covered, wall-mounted flower pot outside my garden room. They came inside and picked the doormat while they were building it and seemed, as robins do, fearless. Then there were the days of comings and goings as the eggs were being laid, and then the busy feeding by both parents taking grubs in their beaks to the hatchlings. All this was going joyfully on until yesterday when I discovered on a window sill a few feet from the nest a nasty mess I realised was the remains of 2 dead fledglings. Since then all activity has stopped and the parents do not appear to be returning to the nest. I have not looked into the nest but I would have thought there might be more than two babies. So have the parents given up? What do they do now, after all this work? I know they have more than one clutch of eggs so will they come back to the same nest? I feel grief struck on their behalf, and mine. We have had magpies in the garden so is it possible that they might have removed the baby birds and left them dead on the windowsill? It seems too tight a space for such a big bird, and odd that they would have put them there rather than on the ground. I am mystified and hope someone can throw some light on what could have happened and what the pair of robins will do now. incidentally, there is no way this can have been done by a cat.
Thanks to anyone who replies.
Thanks to anyone who replies.
