Our backyard is having a busy summer. It will take a few posts to get it all in. Let's start with our great up-close "nature experience".
In May, a robin started building a nest in the rafters on our covered deck. It was abandoned shortly after and the beginnings of the nest fell down. Then a couple of weeks later, the robin (or possibly another robin--they all look alike, you know!) returned, and she was serious this time. The nest was built in just a couple of days. Then two robins started hanging around. When they were gone, we checked the nest a few times to see if there were any eggs. We never saw any eggs in the nest. Now we know that we weren't looking deep enough into the nest. Then about two weeks later, the robin started flying back and forth with worms. We watched carefully and realized there were little tiny beaks pointing skyward to receive the worms. The eggs had been laid, kept warm, and hatched ten feet from our kitchen table and we were clueless!
After only a couple of days, the baby birds had grown enough to reach their necks up and be seen. We counted four. The kids really got into watching the nest. Even Amanda, sitting in her high chair would give a little yell when she saw the mother bird arriving at the nest.
It was amazing to watch the mother robin go back and forth and back and forth with worms ALL DAY LONG. I tried to think of a fitting analogy between bird mothers and human mothers. Here's what I came up with: robin mothers and human mothers stay really busy trying to feed their families. Observant, deep, and profound, I know. I should become a writer, don't you think? Ha!
Once we saw the mother come back with a frog (maybe an inch and a half long). The baby birds fought over it. We're still not sure how the winner choked it down.
Here they are, approximately two weeks after hatching. They left the nest within the next 48 hours.
We read on Wikipedia that only 25% of baby robins survive the first year. The day our robins left the nest, we found one of them dead near our fence. We hope that the three remaining robins fare a little better and maybe next spring one will come back to build their own nest in the same spot.
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