AboutRoger Lederer Expertise Any and all about wild birds - the science of ornithology. Information about birdwatching, ecology, conservation, migration, behavior, banding, rehabilitation, feeding, songs, binoculars, identification, and careers in ornithology. No questions about pet or caged birds, please.
Experience Have a PhD and thirty eight years as a professional ornithologist - research, teaching, author, speaker, webmaster of Ornithology.com . Have written thirty scientific papers, two bird field guides, a textbook in ecology and two recent books entitled "Amazing Birds" and "Birds of New England". Have traveled to over 80 countries watching birds.
Question We live in the country in Ontario and have a large deck surrounding the back of our house. Each year we routinely have three to four nests of eggs on the high beams of our deck made by robins and such. We are able to easily watch the various stages of growth of the baby birds without disturbing the nest. We can simply look down between the spaces of the deck. The only predators which could possibly access the baby birds would be other birds. One day as I was looking down at a nest, I noticed three newly hatched babies which had been eggs the day before. The next day, all three were gone. Is it possible that the mother bird detected the human scent too close to her birds nest and moved them? Also, we have repeatedly found dead babies on the ground below which jump out of the nest before they can fly. Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Can we simply place them back in the nest if they are still alive?
Thank-you,
A friend to the birds.
Answer Birds will not abandon their nests or eggs because someone got to close or even touched them. Birds have a poor sense of smell and it is a myth that touching a nest will cause abandonment. And mother birds are incapable of moving their eggs or young. Most likely it was predator like a jay or crow or rat or something that took the eggs.
Finally, it is PERFECTLY NORMAL for young birds to jump out of their nest before they can fly. Most people think young birds are falling out of their nests, but they leave when they are ready, and that's a week or 10 days before they can fly. The parents feed them on the ground until they can. DO NOT put them back in the nest; they will just jump out again. Sometimes they die after jumping out; making them jump out again will almost certainly injure or kill them.
Thanks for your concern.
