Advice needed about porch & robin fledglings, plz.

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by kygman

Jim, I drive a '97 Geo Tracker with a canvas top that is in dire need of replacement. The back window, that unzips to take out. The zipper's teeth are so bad it needs dentures and I've got the window held in by zip ties. The reason I'm telling you all this is so you can see how a bird found an opening around that back window and nested inside my car! She made her nest inside right about where the taillight is. I knew there were eggs in there but needed to go places in the Tracker so the eggs, and then baby birds, got a wild ride. The longest I was gone away from Mama Bird was about 3 hours, after the eggs had hatched. She was hopping all over the place when I got back. Must not have bothered them too bad. Went out one day and noticed the nest was empty. That's the day the nest was removed from the Tracker.

That's hillarious!

[jimboburnsy]

Originally Posted by kygman

Jim, I drive a '97 Geo Tracker with a canvas top that is in dire need of replacement. The back window, that unzips to take out. The zipper's teeth are so bad it needs dentures and I've got the window held in by zip ties. The reason I'm telling you all this is so you can see how a bird found an opening around that back window and nested inside my car! She made her nest inside right about where the taillight is. I knew there were eggs in there but needed to go places in the Tracker so the eggs, and then baby birds, got a wild ride. The longest I was gone away from Mama Bird was about 3 hours, after the eggs had hatched. She was hopping all over the place when I got back. Must not have bothered them too bad. Went out one day and noticed the nest was empty. That's the day the nest was removed from the Tracker.

My first blush is that this is very nearly too wild to be made up. Also, in the summer of 1999 I drove from Austin to Lake Charles with 4 other people in a 1997 Geo Tracker. That was brutal, the rear compartment is only big enough for birds.

[Tallysmom]

Originally Posted by kygman

Bridge, I've been watching an interesting situation. I deliver newspapers and one of my customers has a bird trying to build a nest in our orange newspaper box. Every morning he would go out and pull the starts of the nest out and the bird would rebuild. he then stuffed the box with bags and asked me to just throw the paper until Mama Bird is gone. The bird still tries to put a nest on the bags. Somebody told him to get a rubber snake and put in the box. Mama aint been back since! I had always heard of putting rubber snakes in your garden to keep birds out but not in a newspaper box. lol

I had a robin that was trying to build a nest over a single pipe in the garage where I work. She'd lay straw and it would fall on the floor.... there was nothing to hold it and she was surrounded by areas with multiple pipes that she could have nested on.

I got sick of cleaning up the mess, so I took a little cardboard box that a light bulb had come up, rubbed it thoroughly in my sweaty armpits so it had a nice good human odor and used a piece of duct tape to hold it to the pipe she was trying to build on....

and she went away. They don't lke human smell either.

And out here -- I've seen robins use their nest twice -- right after the other.... it's almost the end of baby robin time.

[bridgerider]

Thx for the input everyone. I never expected such an array of responses & i'm getting a good laugh out of many of them!