House renovation vs bird

[Tweetybye]

Currently doing building work, and just discovered a starling nesting on the wall due to be knocked through. Builder says he’d take care of it. Implying he’d move to neighbouring tree and let them ‘sink or swim’.

Technically illegal but cant say I’m too bothered given the number of rabbits, pheasants hit with the car, ant nests and other bugs destroyed over the years.

Curious to how many people would actually stop building work for months, delay kitchen, window, door installations, delay electrician/plumbers on a whim all down to a single bird? Shedding any moral postulating I’m curious to what people would actually do in this situation if it was them.

YABU: stop work immediately
YANBU: what bird? Leave the builder be

I was going to ask the exact same question. It is your attitude OP, it stinks.

Laws are not there for you to break because you think you are too important to uphold them.

You are asocial

Our builders found a fresh blackbird‘s nest in the barn we were converting. The project manager asked us what we wanted to do, but they’re all country lads, and it was clear what their feelings were from the extensive list he presented of ‘other stuff we could be getting on with instead’. They got on with the ‘other stuff’ for a couple of weeks, the chicks hatched and fledged, we now have a family of blackbirds in our garden and the nest is framed for luck above the door - we weren’t the only family to call this place home.

I’m just being honest and not fake pretending to care which what is what a lot of people do.

At least I’ve never set up a fake account to deliver devastating news to a stranger I had no business getting involved in.

id rather have a stinking attitude than behave in a cowardly manner.

Well, strangely I was faced with exactly this dilemma this month. Bird nest next to a wall I want demolished.

I rescheduled the work for September.

That’s really inconvenient for me but I would lose sleep over killing birds. I also have to martial my dog around the nest as he is desperate to get his snout in it. So I now have a large cordoned area in my house and no progress on half finished works.

To be crystal clear you would be responsible for killing birds. Because you can’t “move a nest”. It will be abandoned and the chicks will die. Or the builder will just sling it to the floor or something. Someone with no ethics, like your builder, isn’t rehoming birds. But then you don’t care. So 🤷‍♀️ I feel like there are more people like you than ever before and it’s a real shame for the rest of us.

If you aren’t going to believe the people saying they would delay what is the point ?

But I did. I moved on to another part of the project.

It would taint the whole feeling of having a lovely new kitchen for me if I’d made baby birds homeless for it, so I would leave the nest, mainly for selfish reasons about not wanting to live with the guilt.

This is one of two goady bird posts on here today.
What is wrong with people?

You don't have to pretend or fake pretend OP.
Why don't you just do the right thing? You'll feel better for it.

I've already told this story on MN before, so apologies if you've heard it before.

OP, my dad once had a robin make a nest in the pocket of his gardening jacket that was hanging up in his garage. He didn't want to disturb her or her babies so, until they'd fledged he didn't move the car and caught the bus everywhere instead.

And when your grandkids ask you what a starling mumuration was what are you going to tell them as you eat your lab grown apple because there are no bees to pollinate

I'm no hippy, I don't believe climate change is man made...but something's happening. I'm 57. When I was a boy we'd take cover regularly worried about being pooed on in the winter playing football in the late afternoon, because 100,000 or so starlings would be swooping and swirling above us. Moving as one in complex design with no set leader. No set leader. No sound. Just 100,00 bodies cutting through the air, 200,000 wings. Like no jet plane man can make. No thermals. Just a little bird. Twisting and diving. Settling for a moment. But that tree is not right. Almost as one back into the darkening air. Freedom, companionship, simpatico in a iridescent black bird with a dreadful song but beauty in it's soul.

But fuck it. Throw it away. Saddest sight in the world....a lone starling.

I would delay. Yabu.

My colleague blocked up a wall with a birds nest in. She said they heard the chicks for a couple of days after. 😭 I couldn’t look at her in the same way after that.

I would wait, don't interfere with nature 😒

I think the OP is messing with us. She doesn't care, yet has posted here, likely in the knowledge that many posters would be up in arms about the builder's proposal. Rage bait.

I have reported nesting birds on a building site in the past. After a visit from the police officer with responsibility for wildlife protection locally, the builders switched to working elsewhere on the site until the chicks had fledged.

Wow, if you were my neighbour I’d don you in and smile gleefully if you get your just dessert. You are morally repugnant and I hope karma gets you.

Jeez, that's horrendous.

Hardly going to lose sleep if I look the other way.

You clearly are happy to kill the birds so why post? Just to upset posters who care about wildlife? Slow clap for you, job done, hope you are pleased with yourself.

Agreed she’s getting off on it.

One can only hope that at some point in the future your home will be destroyed by a giant bird

I agree! Or a Hitchcock-esque terror flock tapping at the windows constantly in revenge…

Though I think it’s more likely she’ll get shafted by her dodgy sounding builders TBH, if they are turning a blind eye to this one wonders what else they are going to bypass…

And just to be clear @Tweetybye you do realise that if the builders move the nest, it will either fall out of the new location or the parents will abandon it anyway? It would genuinely probably be kinder to take a brick to any chicks/ eggs. Just so you are under no convenient illusions.

Has the bird actually laid eggs yet, if they have you really mustn’t move it. The builder should have been aware before scheduling the work. We have major works going on in my town and all tree work was completed before the middle of February to avoid nesting bird situations. The project was delayed 2 years by newts. Wildlife matters!

From your poll as it stands currently, you have about 40 percent (about 86 people) who think YANBU and about 60 percent (around140) who think YABU.

Yet of those who have commented on the thread, it stands at about 98 percent saying YABU. Which suggests that, as you surmised, a percentage of people, under cover of annonymity, agree with you (even if they might preach otherwise)

I’ve just done similar with a Robin’s nest in a place which has meant we’ve had to avoid the garden. They fledged yesterday and it was absolutely the right thing to do. The OP and her builder are repugnant.