Can I record inactive nests?

NestWatch needs records of “actively used” nests, which correspond to nests that contain eggs or nestlings, or nests under active construction. We can also accept “absence data” in the form of observations of empty nest boxes, if you would like to report these.

However, older nests from previous seasons should not be reported if they were not monitored at the time they were active. This is because we do not have a way of storing records in our database that do not include the dates of the potential nesting activity. We do encourage reporting old nests if data were collected on them at the time they were active.