Possibly a reference to a third nuclear power station being built next door ........
Oh yes that makes more sense! HS2 is very apparent where I live, lots of countryside and trees already gone. But it's ok apparently because they replace the trees they fell - with saplings, half of which get blown over and the rest vandalised. Maybe a couple will live the necessary 200 years to replace them.
With an adult and chicks being dead on the nest I would guess something caused the death of the adult and the chicks therefore starved. The wet, cold weather will have made it hard for the adult to find enough food for itself and the chicks. As wild edges said, mortality rates are high at the best of times.
I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone posting messages, so many of you have suffered heartbreak like mine, my thoughts are with all of you, thank you for helping me understand why this tragedy may have happened, it has helped a bit, I still feel responsible for not helping them or something which I know sounds ridiculous! I also said I'm ripping the ivy down!! But, I'd like to think another pair will nest next year more successfully, won't help me forget finding my poor little robin family though 😭😭😭 Thank you so much again to all you lovely people 😊
Very sad about the robin family, but it would be a tragedy to rip down the ivy - it’s a source of food and refuge for many species, and with so much destruction of habitats already, it would surely be wrong to remove this one?
I would wait and see what Springwatch say (assuming you contact them), before getting rid of the ivy. As @red maple says, ivy is very good for wildlife. I appreciate how upsetting it must have been but please don't act in haste. The RSPB might also be able to give you some advice https://www.rspb.org.uk/
i think removing the ivy would be a mistake. There are many reasons why a nest fails ... for all we know the parent could have had a congenital problem and ‘just died’ after the stresses of laying and brooding eggs. These things happen.
Another year the existence of that ivy could be the difference between life and death for another bird.
Sad things happen ... but life will go on in your garden if the habitat is there. 😊
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I agree that ivy is really valuable as a habitat and in its flowers.
We don't get to control nature - we can just do our best to provide habitat and help and leave nature to its own devices. What we domesticate we do get to control, but not the rest of it. Hard as it sounds, death is not a 'failure', in people or plants or animals, it's part of the round - the out-breath that goes with the in-breath, you can't have one without the other. If you bury the birds or leave them in a bush, perhaps, something will take life - microbes, clean up bugs, worms, to help them reproduce in turn.
With robins, 40% of baby birds are lost before fledging. But adults have multiple broods, two, three or even four per year. So hopefully your surviving adult will go on to have other clutches. And if not this year, then next. Now it's warmer, there is insect food around and settling weather, they might get an easier go of it.
Having sat in the garden today, looking where the robins nested, I do agree with you all, thank you, I think my thoughts were irrational, I will keep it of course and hopefully, I will have a healthy load of babies next year, I've grown the ivy for so many years, I know I wouldn't be able to get rid of it really, just my emotions talking! I really haven't take the discovery well at all 😭😭😭
Posts
HS2 is very apparent where I live, lots of countryside and trees already gone. But it's ok apparently because they replace the trees they fell - with saplings, half of which get blown over and the rest vandalised. Maybe a couple will live the necessary 200 years to replace them.
Thank you so much again to all you lovely people 😊
The RSPB might also be able to give you some advice
https://www.rspb.org.uk/
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
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