MM, What a wonderful experience! As you have seen, the story that birds will abandon babies and nests if they smell humans is an old wive's tale. I have been fortunate to have bluebirds nest in my yard, and they will even tolerate a nest change when it has been extremely necessary. Some species are more wary than others, but most have a very poor sense of smell. I have found most of the songbirds that actually take care of their young (other than cowbirds) are actually very loyal to them. They will risk their own safety (to a point) to insure the babies' survival. Nature does bless them with enough sense to preserve their own life in extreme threats (like wasps) however. After all, baby songbirds have a 1 in 2 chance of making through the first year. It wouldn't make sense for the breeding pair to throw all caution to the wind and give up their own lives. They can always go on and raise another brood afterall.

Yes she did! It seems they stick around for several weeks/month until flock disperses for breeding,.. still lots of Crab Apples, Mountain Ash, High bush Cranberry, Chokecherries, Russian Olive etc. around, they might even pick off new buds on trees. Only had ones a nest in the backyard around 25 years ago in a little spruce trees about 4 foot up, now that tree is HUGE. Have never seen the Cedars here in winter, they soon will be returning and I will see usually several nest out on the hobby farm, [above pictures] planted several hundred spruce trees from seeds. Hardly ever see Bohemian nest,..I'll have to ask them where they go.

Those little birds are so adorable. & be on the alert: In spring, they get "drunk" on fermenting berries (I forget what kind of plant), & land on the ground, reeling, easy game for any predator. All they need is a safe haven until they sober up!

A couple of years ago, I had a pair of waxwings nesting in a tree in my yard. A robin kept approaching the nest. Even though the robin didn't do anything to the eggs, the waxwings ended up abandoning the nest with the eggs in it because, I guess, of the robin coming too close to the nest and disturbing them. Even though robins don't pose a threat, I guess they felt the nest wasn't safe. I think the robin liked the location of the nest. Anyway, they stayed away for quite some time. They eventually returned and dismantled the nest and moved it to another yard. I had provided wool for them to build the nest so they didn't want to leave the wool behind so they relocated. I was sad to see them leave, but the next year they successfully nested and had 5 fledglings that all successfully left the nest.