Egg Stealing
Has anyone else come across this before? My neighbour claims that blackbirds are stealing the eggs of robins nesting in his garden. I find this very hard to believe. I told him that I would suspect it is either squirrels or magpies, both of which we have quite a few of around here and both notorious for egg stealing. His 'evidence' is that he has seen blackbirds go into the bush where the robins nest. That isn't exactly proof, in my opinion.
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Never heard of it🤔 Perhaps he saw a Crow or other Corvid and mistook the size of the bird.🤷♀️ Some folks identification of birds is a bit sketchy unless they are keen birdwatchers. More likely to be Corvids or squirrels.
Ask him for a photo of a blackbird with a Robin’s egg in its beak, otherwise………….he’s tweeting up the wrong tree!Robin’s build nests quite early, but delay egg laying until it’s warmer, mid April ish, so if it’s a recent sighting of such behaviour, then again he’s possibly mistaken. Our resident Robin’s are still pairing up here, not ready to lay yet.
Good luck with trying to convince him though🤣
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+1, the earliest I remember is early April👍🏻. We’ve had some truly cold snaps of late so the food for any bird won’t really abound to ensure survival.
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Robins' eggs are quite distinctive. If by the remote chance your neighbour saw a blackbird removing one this early in the year it will be an old one, maybe predated but the shell left in situ, from last breeding. Highly unlikely to be this years and the Blackbird won't have predated it.
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Good point WN. Avian spring cleaning🤣👍
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Blackbirds often build several nests just to impress their spouses by offering a choice, they may well have been investigating a possible nest site?
Our main nest marauders are definitely Magpies and Squirrels...the pigeons will vouch for that, we rarely see a baby pigeon.
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According to my resident Zoologist 'baby' pigeons leave the nest far later than most other birds and are almost fully grown with adult feathers when they do.
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We have robins nesting in a shrub outside our lounge window, we think there must be young in there as we have been watching both parents taking in worms/grubs etc., very busy they are too! we have also seen the blackbirds going into the same shrub, they are collecting nesting material but we have never seen a blackbird steal an egg. I go along with the opinion of others that if eggs are disappearing then it is most probably squirrels, magpies, jackdaws or crows (all of which we get in our garden) or maybe even a rat.
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Early brood Impy😁 Too cold for the poor little blighters up here at the moment, but it’s been a lot warmer today.
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Thanks, everyone for your replies. You've confirmed what I believed, that blackbirds don't steal eggs.
On the subject of blackbirds, when I looked out this morning there were two blackbirds having a right scrap, with feathers going everywhere. A third bird joined in, then another. I've never seen such a 'rumble'. They were still at it quite a time later.
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