So one morning last month, I went out back to check hot tub chemicals (my daily chore and I have yet to get a really good grip on it but, anyway...) and noticed something going on atop the electrical meter right outside the back door. A couple robins were very intent on building a nest there, about a foot above our grill and just a few inches from where the back screen door slams against the wall approximately a hundred times a day. Fionn and I spent a lot of our morning watching the nest building process, but I was sure that Mama Bird would smarten up real quick and find a new place to build for real. However, a couple days later I lifted Fionn up to peek in said nest (it was just enough above my head that I couldn't see in) and she reported there were eggs there.
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Ta-da!!!
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There was lots of excitement about the eggs, and there was lots of climbing on chairs, and chairs stacked on chairs, to get a good look too. Now everyone was wondering when they would hatch (I was figuring never, because I still thought Mama Bird was going to make a run for it, especially now that the nest itself was producing even more traffic and chaos then is normal on our back porch.) But, some internet-savvy child of ours googled the query and reported that we could expect baby birds in 12-16 days.
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This is actually Daddy Bird, who usually just hung about the yard,
but occasionally took a turn on the nest. |
So, we took to nest watching, and the comings and goings of Mama and Daddy bird over the next two weeks. And endured lots of night time scolding from grumpy birds when we ventured out after dark. But precisely 14 days after we believe those eggs to have been laid, we had a baby bird. One. The other eggs totally disappeared and that is a complete mystery. Raccoons?
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Not so very cute, is he?
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Getting a little fluffier, can you see him down there?
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Thinking my camera is someone there to feed him.
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Ahhh... that's more like it. (By the way, I am an extremely
amateur photographer, and it is really, really hard to get a shot
of Mama Bird feeding Baby Bird. I think it may have been
complicated by the fact that I was trying to read a science
lesson to my younger kids at the same time.
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See, getting big and fluffy and cute now, isn't he?
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Then, on day 16, I went out to check on our little guy and the nest was all quiet. So I got out one of those chairs my children had been stacking up for better baby bird viewing and peeked right in that nest (which was really brave of me, because I was a little scared that he would pop up and nip off my nose or something (birds do that right?) and if he had even threatened to do such a thing, I guarantee you, I would have made an extremely ungraceful dismount from my chair. Luckily no one else was up, so I could risk it. But our little guy was gone. We had totally missed the flying lesson. Luckily Google had also taught us that little birds take about 10 more days to become competent flyers and that until then they are still hanging around near the nest with Mama and Daddy bird still keeping a close eye on them. The kids located our baby bird in the back corner of the yard where he continued to hang out for a couple of weeks. And we would occasionally spot him around the yard.
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And here is our baby all grown up (and saving China), no perched in our
neighbor's tree getting ready to take off on his own. |
P.S. This post has absolutely nothing to do with Bayley moving into an apartment in Fort Collins next month.
