Two days ago while watering my vegetable garden, a bird flew down and hit me on the head. I stopped I looked up and it was a Robin, I continued walking by my figs and the bird kept attacking me. I found the Robin nest in my grapevine near my vegetable garden and several of my figs. Yesterday it kept attacking me, and it seems that now the male is helping her with the attacks. My wife had to hold a stick to keep them from hitting me while I'm picking tomatoes and cucumbers. 

I would pick up the nest and move it somewhere else farther away from the garden.  I would wear a hat and work gloves and lots of clothes and have a helper with a broom.

Get a 12ga. with a modified choke and use some dove shots.
If the problem presists then move up to an extra full choke and triple XXX buck shots.
This should take care of the birds, the nest and the tree with one shot.

RAFED!!!  NO!!!  Not a Robin!!!  They're usually not so aggressive like that.  I vote for relocating the nest somewhere safer for everyone.  :)

noss

Viv, I dunno about you, but Robins are DAMN aggressive here. 

The thing is, if they made a nest there one year, they will probably be back next year at the same location.  If moving the nest doesn't stop the attacks, shoot the bird.

I'm so afraid of coming anywhere near the nest... I don't know about re locating it... 

I have a robin nest in a cedar hedge which belongs to my neighbour on the property line. It is next and close to my two sweet cherry trees and they don't have to go too far for their meals. They get to the fruit as soon the cherry ripen so now the few cherries left on the opposite side of the tree I get them when they are red i.e. before ripening (or else they are gone too). For whatever reason they are not attacking though.

I think that it is against the law to kill a song bird in this country, but baby birds mature really fast and will probably be gone within 2 weeks if you can wait it out.

I know it's against the law, we are joking. right Rafed?

Yes, I like birds too.

Robbins are eating my blueberries so I'm building some more frames to hang the bird netting on.  My three year old grapevines are loaded with grapes this year too.  I'll need to cover them soon.  I took out a chipmunk today with my airmaster 77 bb gun.  Home depot had a new rat trap made of plastic thats like a foot pedal.  You use your foot to set it and no chance of getting your fingers caught.  I cut down my cherry trees.  Didn't get one cherry.  There was some kind of end rot and the birds and chipmunk got the rest.  They're too much work.  You have to prune them just right to get cherries.  I have redhaven peaches and golden delicious apples to replace them.

How do you mean that Rafed?  Stewed, fried, smothered down with veggies?  LOL!

Our son used to go hunt blackbirds (starlings) with his friends and they would cook and eat them.  They had to have a mess of them for a good meal, but those are trash birds here and it didn't matter if anyone hunted them.

One time, Michael brought home half dozen little bird breasts (the only part that has any meat to speak of) and he happened to mention they were robins (they come down here for the winter, but don't nest here).  I wanted to skin him alive for killing robins.

Now my curiosity is piqued about the aggressiveness y'all have spoken of.  In NJ, if we would find a baby robin that fell from the nest too soon, we would rig up an old bird cage, or box and put the babies in there and the parents would just keep feeding it until it was old enough to fly off with them.  The parents didn't care how close we were to the bird cage, or box, they'd just go on into the cage and feed the baby right in front of us.

Maybe your robins have been hanging out with the mockingbirds and catbirds and bluejays.

I found a tiny baby bird one year and it didn't have any feathers on it yet, so I decided since there were all kinds of mockingbirds hanging around the baby and they were yelling, it must be a baby mockingbird, so I tried to give it to them by rigging up a box for its safety, but the mockingbirds wouldn't go anywhere near it.

I gave up and took the baby into the house to raise it myself, which I did, but before long, the baby started to put out some real feathers and they were blue!  It wasn't a mockingbird baby, it was a baby bluejay and the MBs and BJs hate each other with a passion.  The mockingbirds were wanting to kill the baby jay, not protect it and it never occurred to me that if it had been a baby mockingbird, I would have been dive-bombed by the whole lot of them. 

Yes, Bass, birds are edible.  Are you sure they're robins?  Brownish heads and backs with a rust-red breast for the male and dustier colors for the female?

Maybe NJ robins are just more gentle, or somthing because they used to make nests on our front porch and they were NEVER aggressive in any way, just sweet, gentle birds.  They weren't afraid of us and they didn't care if we were on the porch talking to them or watching them.

What does your kamakaze robin pair look like?

They sound like they're acting more like mockingbirds.  Now, you talk about attacks--They know now to do that.

I hope you'll relocate the nest and it will work out.

noss

Very doubtful the parents would continue taking care of the kids if you move the nest. Birds tend to be more keyed in on location than on physical features, so their nest in the wrong place may no longer be recognizable to them as "their" nest.

Noss, I started my post before you finished yours; it sounds like from your experience that maybe robins would deal okay with a relocated nest. Interesting solution!

Hi Ken,

There are many old wives' tales around about birds and one is never try to put a baby bird back into its nest because after you touch it, the parents won't feed it again.  Not so.

Birds don't have keen sense of smell, so they don't smell us on the baby and most parent birds will feed their babies wherever they are found no matter what they have to do.  They know where those babies are.  I'm sure, if someone relocated a nest a long way from where it was originally, the parents might not hear their babies, or if they are just eggs, find the eggs.  Bass' robins sound like they'd be right there and would see where the nest would be relocated to, the way they are attacking them.

Sometimes, even if a parent bird is killed and there are babies, the other birds of the same kind will feed those orphaned babies.

Neat, eh?

noss

One other thought (which is admittedly a big reach)--but do these birds always attack from behind? Some animals prefer not to face their "victims." I have a friend who does eagle research in many remote areas in the US and other parts of the world. We were once discussing mountain lion attacks, and he told be about a trick he picked up from rural people in some country I don't remember. He said they discouraged big cat attacks by wearing hats with wide open eyes painted on the backs, and he had started doing the same thing in mountain lion habitat. Many big cats prefer to ambush their victims and kill from behind with a bite to the base of the skull or back of the neck. I guess with "eyes in the backs of their heads", these folks didn't appear to be easy prey. Maybe you could scare these "raptor robins" with the same approach!

Ken,

I can honestly tell you when I was a kid I was attacked by a bunch of Blue Jays from behind.
I stole a baby Blue Jay and all hell broke loose.

I felt a couple pecks in the back of my head and neck.

Through it all I was Victorious!

Rafed--those birds considered you a "suspect". ;-)

 Was caught red handed

It's a good thing you only took a baby, and didn't try to run off with one of their fig trees instead!

LOL Ken

Bass the robins and Blackbirds here in my yard and on side of house do the same thing you describe mostly toward the dogs. They have yet to actually hit them but i have seen them go at the dogs mostly as they are walking toward the patio.
I have seen the baby birds learning to fly in our yard and they were just protecting them and i would shoe the dogs away. Luckily the small birds could take refuge up in the the evergreen bush out of there reach.

If moving nest is not an option -

What you can do is put a hose out in the yard you know kids love to play with the water hoses and when they see one of them birds let them have some harmless fun and in mean time i may keep the birds out of there way .

I think it's okay to move it. If they are that devoted they are going to follow you (pecking) the whole way. Maybe get a basket to put the nest in to make it easier to get up in the air and away from predators, if you could hoist it up higher into a shade tree maybe the adults would not be so tense. Protect your eyes!

I used to have a Carolina Wren that would nest in a hanging basket (that I then of course had to stop watering and let the passion flower die), and the light fixtures outside (that needed to have their bulbs removed). The worst part was she was always by the door and ended up inside a few times.

Birds are not smart, those robins picked a bad spot so in order to successfully raise their chicks they could really use your help. Cats and snakes could easily get the nest in a low spot like they chose.

I raise canaries, and if I ever touch a canary egg, the mother will abandoned  it. So I doubt it's a good idea to relocate the nest, I'm not even sure if their eggs have hatched.

Bass you must be living in paradise :)