To all members of Cayugabirds list, There was a lively recent discussion on the Cayugabirds-L eList about whether American Robins routinely reuse their nests. Some reported seeing reuse, a few others reported otherwise. The question is more complex and important than it seems at first glance; certainly not many cup-nesting species do so. There has been at least one paper published on nest reuse in European Blackbirds, a close cousin (Wysocki 2004. Nest re-use by blackbirds—The way for safe nesting? Acta Ornithologica, 39(2):164-168.)
With permission of the List Owner, we--Marie Read and Anne Clark-- thought it would be interesting to gather your observations of robin nesting and clarify the patterns of reuse in our local robins, in order to understand when and why robins might reuse nests or nest sites. So we have developed a survey about the details of any robin nests and renests you have observed this year, with or without reuse of an old nest or site. We hope you will be interested in filling it out and sending in your data, so we can summarize your reports and look for interesting patterns. The resulting summary will be posted to the eList for everyone's enjoyment. If you are interested in participating, please send an off-list message to BOTH Marie Read ( mpr5 at cornell.edu) and Anne Clark (anneb.clark at gmail.com). It is important to send to both, since both have some away times, when the other will answer. Then we will send you the survey in the body of a reply email, with full instructions. Remember--we are interested in ANY observed robin nesting, with and without the reuse of a previously constructed nest. We look forward to hearing from you! Marie and Anne -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
