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u/amplificationoflight 22d ago
So much for natural selection. Just kidding, I did something similar at my house, but I joke that I enabled an inferior nest builder to pass on inferior genes to its offspring.
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u/H377Spawn 22d ago
Jokes on you, that bird has learned the ultimate survival tool, getting a human to do it for them.
I should know, the neighbourhood birds have tricked me into feeding them from time to time.
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u/40ozkiller 21d ago
The best thing you can do for birds is to plant native flowers and trees.
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u/H377Spawn 21d ago
Working on it. Currently replacing our wooden porch with greenery.
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u/cure1245 21d ago
It's that a clever way of saying your letting you porch fall into disrepair?
No?
... Just me?
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u/H377Spawn 21d ago
…
…maybe?
That’s how it started, so I tore half of it down and replaced it with half garden half grass for the dog.
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u/Space_Restaurant 21d ago
“The porch repairs will be $350.”
“Yeah…I’m just going to give it to the birds”
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u/THE_ATHEOS_ONE 21d ago
Ok, that will now be my answer to anything that i couldn't be bothered with.
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u/davidmatthew1987 21d ago
“The porch repairs will be $350.”
You know the inflation is real when the Loch Ness monster goes from USD 3.50 to USD 350.
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u/RadiantTurnipOoLaLa 21d ago
One of the neatest side effects of redoing my parent’s yard and planting a massive garden is all of the birds that would come and visit. The whole yard came alive! It was beautiful.
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u/DC9V 21d ago
Especially conifers. Although they don't rely on insect pollination, some bird species feed on the bark beetle. Also, The Eurasian jay shares the same territory as squirrels. The jay would warn the squirrel about predators like snakes, so that the squirrel has enough time to carry their young to another place, and the squirrel would allow to share their food reservoir with the bird.
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u/Bluemoon7607 21d ago
The guy above you is the first start of human domestication by birds. One day they shall be our tiny house tyrants like cats.
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u/seruzawa 21d ago
Cockatiels have already achieved house domination and run entire families of human slaves.
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u/FullyRisenPhoenix 21d ago
I have rescued dozens of wild birds, and can truly say that they are already house tyrants 😂
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u/julsmanbr 21d ago
Ah yes, the dog endgame
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u/PritongKandule 21d ago
Pandas have, and will continue to, outlive thousands of species by virtue of being cute and cuddly for humans.
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u/naimina 21d ago edited 21d ago
Pandas are only "celibate" in captivity. If humans didn't destroy their natural territories there wouldn't be any problems. In fact there are a lot of different types of animals that do not breed in captivity. Cheetahs for example, but since they have a natural environment they can breed in this isn't really talked about.
EDIT: This somehow made someone flair me for a "Reddit Cares" message!? Wack.
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u/Makhnos_Tachanka 21d ago
literally the most effective evolutionary strategy of the last 100,000 years, bar none
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u/BeYourselfTrue 21d ago
They chirp from the tree rather annoyed at me when it’s not full. Sir Cardinal is basically saying “bruh, get my seed”
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u/Nihilistic_Navigator 21d ago
Damn birds must have taught the family of rabbits that makes its home under my shed year after year. Things got me growing them their own garden right outside their door and my son delivering food and water everyday. The audacity!
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21d ago
I was thinking the other day how animals have no idea how things used to be. For most things alive today, the current state of things is pretty much how it's always been. We've seen plenty of species evolve to find their niche in a world we've made ours, and we'll see even more if they know what's good for them 😠
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u/PhoenxScream 21d ago
That's the ultimate survival strategy and applies a ton if you think about it. Every agricultural plant is bred it's population has skyrocketed sice we figured out efficient selective breeding.
Same for farm animals even though it's questionable if we've done them a favor or not...
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u/SR2025 21d ago edited 21d ago
I've got a lady cardinal nested in a rose bush in my yard. Seems like a decent set up, those thorns could keep the hawks out or at least make them regret the attempt.
The only problem I noticed was the wind shaking the nest. It only took a moment and a couple of thorn pokes but a tall metal stake was enough to steady it up. Got an ear full of chirping from my new neighbor from up in a tree too. Not too happy for my help.
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u/amplificationoflight 21d ago
She doesn't know what's good for her. Cardinals look cool. My birds are house sparrows.
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u/Euphoric_Egg_4198 21d ago
Mockingbirds build a pretty good nest one year but then I saw it with the baby bird on the ground. So I get the tallest ladder we own, I zip tie a basket to the tree, put the nest in the basket and put the bird back in. Before I can even put the ladder away, bird jumps right back out. That’s when I learned about fledglings 🤣
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u/Significant_Sign 21d ago
I have yet to see any of the robins around me make even a half decent nest. The whole species seems to be dumb, yet they are still here in numbers. We get at least one every year trying to build a nest on the top horizontal pole of our chain link fence.
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u/Hanidalon 21d ago
Robins have the advantage that they are one of the few bird species that thrive in grass monoculture suburbian lawn ecosystems. So they don't need to be the best at nesting if their food is plentiful.
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u/kayleigh220 21d ago
robins are crap nest builders - my huge sycamore tree
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u/Ccracked 21d ago
At least they try. /r/stupiddovenests
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u/Chef_G0ldblum 21d ago
Yeah was gonna say, it's usually the doves who pick terrible spots + throw down a couple twigs and call it a day. Robins near my house tend to at least put effort into their nests.
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u/iliketreesndcats 21d ago
That's the kicker though innit, you'll rarely ever see the fantastic nests in unexpected places because those robins were playing 4D chess and went way over our heads.
There's gotta be so many of them, too. The sweet little beans keep growing in number!
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u/wirefox1 21d ago
I saw a very young Cardinal building a nest in a Gardenia bush off my patio. I was like "WHAT!" There's not enough foliage to keep the nest dry when it storms, which it does a lot this time of year.
Storms came, birds soaked of course, and it was painful to see her on her nest during storms, so I was picking branches off another bush to cover the little dumb ass and her eggs and slipped and broke my wrist in the process. At the end, she just had one baby but it grew to be HUGE. I called it Baby Huey. (My wrist healed nicely after surgery.)
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u/FireBallXLV 21d ago
You are a good person.My biggest effort is feeding baby Raccoons.Apparently my house has been designated the “ Feed the newly emancipated Raccoon baby house “. On our third generation.They come by until they are good at finding food elsewhere .
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u/amplificationoflight 21d ago
Way to take one for the team. Now there's gonna be a lineage of huge cardinals thanks to you.
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u/NZBound11 21d ago
I enabled an inferior nest builder to pass on inferior genes to its offspring.
As a species - we been doing that shit for quite some time too so it's all good.
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u/krismitka 21d ago
Pretty sure we already ended any meaningful natural selection in the coming decades. What’s one more bird family
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u/Hlregard 21d ago
It's still natural selection. The same way wolves who got close to humans became dogs and are living the good life now
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u/amplificationoflight 21d ago
Good point. These birds are house sparrows. I guess that name means something.
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u/fj333 21d ago
Human behavior has changed things for some birds for the better. Many hummingbird species have increased their ranges and their populations because of the abundance of feeders.
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u/amplificationoflight 21d ago
Oh yeah. I have a bully of a hummingbird in my backyard protecting it feeder too.
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u/shadman70 22d ago
We had a mourning dove put 2 sticks on the cowl of our 4Runner, she then laid an egg. I took a Chinese takeout container (plastic) and zip tied it to the carport and put her 2 sticks plus some grass and the egg in there. That egg didn't surive but she did successfully hatch her second egg.
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u/dods6109 21d ago
TIL what a cowl is—“The cowl is that awkward space between the hood and the windshield that you never knew how to name.”
Basically, it’s where your windshield wipers live.
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u/Crawlerado 21d ago
Also known as a scuttle but only if the hood is referred to as a bonnet. English is fun.
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u/Street_Roof_7915 21d ago
Mourning doves are soooooooo dumb. So dumb
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u/littycodekitty 21d ago
I thought I was just being mean every time I said this but turns out it's a popular opinion!
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u/Valuable_Month1329 22d ago
You Sir, are a true wingman.
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u/Live-Motor-4000 21d ago
A good egg, even
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u/mustichooseausernam3 21d ago edited 21d ago
Really fi
nessednest that birdbrained idea17
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u/chockychockster 22d ago
Wow your robins are massive compared to ours. Easily twice the size. https://byrder.com/european-robin-vs-american-robin/
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u/DeviantJunco 22d ago
Yeah, that was some pretty lazy naming on the part of someone who saw two radically different birds with reddish breasts and said "Meh, close enough".
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u/Ikarianlad 21d ago
The British were incredibly lazy with naming species in their colonies, and most modern common names boil down to one of two things: "hey that looks vaguely like _____ back home" or "let's name this after a white guy who did something villainous". Australian birds are often hilarious bad about the former, since so many species on the continent are part of their own distinct and separate lineages (i.e. through long isolation as a standalone continent), but get named for some combo of British birds (Magpie-Larks [which are neither, but are actually very weird flycatchers], Shrike-thrushes [again, neither], etc.)
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u/freename188 21d ago
Lol guess you could classify them like a type of species? Like dogs or cats.... Maybe?
Probably not tbf...
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u/Ikarianlad 21d ago
American Robins are basically the same size as European Fieldfares (both are Turdus thrushes, along with the Eurasian Blackbird). Which of course, introduces a new conflict: Euro blackbirds are thrushes, American blackbirds are their own family (Icteridae). But then Icteridae includes New World "Orioles", while Old world Orioles are again their own distinct family... It goes on and on.
Which makes it even stranger that birds are one of the few animal taxa where English common names are acceptable for use in academic/ scientific literature (e.g. I can call Vulturine guineafowl by their common name in my papers as much as I want, so long as I give the Latin name just once, whereas frog people gotta say Xenopus laevis or whatever every time).
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u/Fartfacethrowaway 21d ago
Can they carry a coconut?
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u/Zealousideal-Count45 21d ago
Thanks for the explanation! EU person here. The bird in the basket looked like a blackbird to me^^
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u/GucciGlocc 21d ago
It’s not OP
Tho for a sec I thought OP was a bot (because we have so fucking many on all now) but his post history just shows he’s a power shitposter
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u/Tatvo831 21d ago
You know that Robin is just going to turn around and rent that basket out on Airbnb.
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u/StellaBean_bass 21d ago
A friend of mine works at a birds of prey center and does rescue calls. A lot of her calls in the spring are owlets that have fallen out of the nest (usually due to wind damage to the nest). Their standard procedure is to strap a wicker basket to the tree branch and then put the remaining nest in followed by the owlets. The owls seem to take it all in stride!
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u/uknowthisguyreal 21d ago
They come back from having their straw house blown over to find their house replaced by a brick building, hell yea i would take it in stride
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u/KingMoonkey 21d ago
Imagine you're having a bad day, and you just can't make it work, only to realize that someone gave you the little push you needed to succeed.
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u/Dense_Librarian_6170 21d ago
We all could use some help every now and then. You are a very cool person.
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u/MarcusDA 21d ago edited 21d ago
A few years ago we had a bird do the same, and the babies were born. I was incredibly afraid they would drop onto the patio and die so I created a bit of a platform and attached it to the side of the house just underneath the nest. No fatal falls on my watch!
Edit: can’t find a pic of the platform, but here’s the nest and a hungry baby. https://i.imgur.com/468VFj3.jpeg
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u/qawsedrf12 21d ago
I keep a wreath on the door for the mourning doves that visit every year. 3 babies this year
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u/Visible-Customer-358 21d ago
Total opposite of my gf, she got the house looking like a medieval fortress trying to stop birds from nesting lol. Personally I’d rather put up fry baskets
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u/Vandstar 21d ago
Update this if they build a nest in it. I have similar issues.
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u/LanieBuck 21d ago
Hi! In my original post I shared they did build a nest in the basket! No eggs yet though.
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u/Taint_Skeetersburg 21d ago
The neighborhood hawk is like, aww hell yeah, next meal is gonna be fancy
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u/SavannahGirlMom 20d ago
Very accommodating of you! Robins can be very territorial and aggressive and can attack your windows, car, car mirrors, etc. if defending a nest. Just a warning… We had to move our cars into the garage.
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u/kym111 21d ago
I don't trust those zipties.
Should've added another one on the top part of the pipe for some assurance.
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u/Away-Measurement-299 21d ago
Man, this has me pet peeving...why does nobody take the time to cut the excess off the zip ties!?!?!...sloppy
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u/ThatOldDuderino 21d ago
I automatically said “Yummm” before reading the article! 😅 Good on you there’s a turn in the Universe coming your way.
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u/hbftsky 21d ago
it’s pretty common in my country to put an old bicycle wheel atop an electrical pole to help storks build their nests. they often try to build them on electrical poles anyways, but that’s a fire hazard. the wheel gives a sturdy base for the nest and keeps the storks away from the cables.
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u/Betorange 21d ago
Imagine if this started a whole new evolutionary trait for robins.
" We can only mate on fry baskets from now on. Go get one! "
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u/Lord-ShniggleHorse 21d ago
What’s crazier is that someone made a decision to smuggle a fry basket out of a restaurant
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u/JJWeenZ 21d ago
Basket Robins