Every week, it seems, we get another angry letter (sent via carrier pigeon) from a livid ornithologist. “Why do you never cover any bird-related news?” they demand. “This is avian erasure!” they scream at us in vitriolic voicemails. “Would it kill you to write a list of the best bills and beaks?” they wonder, irritatedly. Look, I’ll freely admit that our ornithological content hasn’t been the best, especially since we had to shelve our bird-focused sister site, Featherly, because of that lawsuit thing. But I hope we can make up for it, at least a bit, with this fascinating bit of news about how a family of Robins have made a new Ford F-250 temporarily immobile.
The reason the 2026 F-250 at Olathe Ford Lincoln in Olathe, Kansas can’t be moved is because a seemingly truck-appreciating (or possibly just a Ford fan) robin has made a very cozy-looking nest on the front passenger-side wheel of the F-250, quite comfortably ensconced inside the wheel well.
Video and photos of the nest show a very well-constructed bird dwelling, which housed four lovely blue eggs that soon hatched into four hungry, baby robins.
The reason the nest can’t just be moved off the tire and placed somewhere else, say, the wheel well of a lower-margin Ford like an Escape or a used Tempo, is because the Federal Government will not stand for that kind of nonsense.
Yes, thanks to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, the American Robin (turdus migratorius, and stop laughing back there, I can hear you) is on the list of protected birds (you can check the full list here if you don’t believe me) that cannot be bothered or interfered with in any way. As the treaty states:
Unless and except as permitted by regulations made as hereinafter provided in this subchapter, it shall be unlawful at any time, by any means or in any manner, to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, attempt to take, capture, or kill, possess, offer for sale, sell, offer to barter, barter, offer to purchase, purchase, deliver for shipment, ship, export, import, cause to be shipped, exported, or imported, deliver for transportation, transport or cause to be transported, carry or cause to be carried, or receive for shipment, transportation, carriage, or export, any migratory bird, any part, nest, or egg of any such bird, or any product, whether or not manufactured, which consists, or is composed in whole or part, of any such bird or any part, nest, or egg thereof, included in the terms of the conventions…
That’s pretty comprehensive. That bird nest and the six robins that live in it are protected with the full force of the law until those baby birds are able to fly away on their own.
The truck has actually already been sold; thankfully, the new owners are happy to wait until those baby birds can fly before taking possession of the truck, which will forever have a fantastic origin story as the former federally protected home of a family of birds.
I’m sure the robin parents are very excited for their quadruplets to grow up healthy and happy and be able to take those first tentative flights, and while they may miss their old nest with its great view of that coil spring, I’m sure they’ll find lovely new homes, ideally ones not in the wheel wells of pickup trucks.
On a more cynical note, I wonder if an arrangement with some local robins could help with, say, keeping your car from being repossessed? Slide a local robin a fistful of nightcrawlers in exchange for building a nest in whatever car you’re temporarily underwater in, and boom, you’ve scored yourself a little more, federally-protected time where your car can’t get repo’d!
Maybe those ornithologists are right; we do need more bird content!
Top graphic image: KHOU11/YouTube
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