I had an interesting situation at our house. Bought a flower planter and left it on our front porch about chest high off the porch. I saw a bird's nest appear a couple weeks later but never saw a bird so I tossed the nest into the bushes to mulch. Then I saw the flowers were trampled and looked to see why and found 3 Robin's eggs in the flower bed. I used utensils to retrieve the nest from the bushes and carefully laid the 3 eggs into the nest. All the while the mama Robin was squawking at me. I checked and saw the bird returned to the nest and was doing some tidying up. Then low and behold she reclaimed the nest. Later that same day I saw 4 eggs as she apparently had one in reserve. She is nesting nicely now and we can't wait to see her little hatchlings come to life. I did handle the nest by hand at first when I tossed it but who knows if the bird cared. It makes sense that birds don't have a sense of smell.

these *&*(%$% crows we have everywhere. Don't dis the crows! They alerted me to the bald eagle about to make lunch out of my favorite hen. Miraculously, she survived with nothing but a lot of feathers, and a couple of quarter sized patches of skin missing on her back. I had no idea she was still alive when I charged the thing, and made it drop her. If they hadn't been harassing the eagle, and if I hadn't gone out to see why the crows were making so much noise, she would have been a goner.

Our Robins, which up to this year have been nesting twice a year on our deck, decided to nest 3 ft from the ground in the honeysuckle by the horse pasture. Now that the babies have hatched, my new shelter Jack Russell terrier that we recently adopted, can hear the sounds and springs into action, trying to leap up and grab the nest. It is wrapped in honeysuckle, but that little hunt terrier is a highly energetic vermin hunter. So far I've stopped him before he got very far, and let him know he's NOT to bother the nest, but it's an extra worry to me that I have to keep tight watch on Jasper until the babies can fly. I keep him in the house or on the fenced deck when he's not with me, but that's a long time for us not to make a mistake and let him out of our sight. I grumbled to DuBois that building a nest so low was unwise and that I wish those Robins had used the old nest on the deck beams again so the babies would be safer. But with Jasper on the deck so much, the fledglings would have to be quick even then

I'm new here, so this is actually a question rather than comment. Last year, a Robin built a nest in iron basket on my front porch. About 3 weeks ago a dove built there and laid her eggs. Yesterday, a large piece from a plastic shopping bag was on top of the nest. The eggs were still there, but one has rolled away from the nest. The dove/s didn't return all day. This morning a Robin was working on building on top of the plastic and eggs. I am wondering what could have happened. Did the dove abandon because the eggs weren't going to hatch or something else.