the Saga of a Momma Robin and her brood

A Robin decided to build her nest on my back porch two weeks ago. I had thought I'd fixed all the places she had been nesting over the past couple of years but she found a new one out in plain sight... my NordicTrack. *sigh*

By the time I noticed the nest, it was too late to dismantle - she'd laid four eggs. 

Click on the individual thumbnailed pictures for them to enlarge.

The Nest		Momma Robin
Day 1 The first to hatch with another beginning to make it's way out. 5/26/2006		Day 1 Three have hatched. Waiting to see if the last egg will hatch or not.
Day 1 All four have hatched now. With the last one to hatch still having bits of shell stuck to him/her.		Templar waiting to see if something will fall. Hopefully the ex-pen will keep them on the correct side of the wire!
Both boys waiting eagerly for chirping to start. To them the chirping means "squeak toy!" They regularly run the fence line underneath the trees to look for fallen baby birds at this time of year...		Day 2
Day 3 Eyes are still closed.		Day 4 Today was extremely hot. They aren't crying to be fed they're panting from the heat!
Day 5 Today was cooler. I think they may be starting to have that "if anything comes overhead open your mouth to be fed" instinct.		Nest on Day 5 Momma Robin built this nest pretty well didn't she?
Day 6 They're definitely getting that "Feed Me" instinct now.		Day 6 too Side view of "Feed Me".
Day 7 Still no sound from them yet. I'm surprised. I thought they'd be screaming for food by now.		Day 8 Look at the feather change from yesterday to today! Wow!
Day 8 too Oh look! The eyes are starting to open...		Day 9 Yep, one definitely has it's eyes open now. (And I doubt he's happy about the camera!)
Day 10 Starting to get a bit crowded...		Day 10 It took FOREVER to get this shot! She didn't care for me standing nearby when she wanted to feed her kids.
Day 11 And even more crowded...		Day 12 Can you just hear the bottom baby saying, "Stop squishing me! Moooommmmyyyy!"
Day 12 Side view		Day 12 My solution for when they eventually start trying their wings. Hopefully they'll go over the edge of the nest and land in the branches and STAY there! I'm sure Chev and Tem-Tem will be watching avidly for someone to fall all the way to the ground!
Day 13 How can the bottom bird breathe?! Also the calm before the storm...

Day 13 - I went to such effort to make sure there were branches underneath the nest for when the babies started trying to fly. My White Pine trees in the backyard certainly knew the effort I made! They contributed the branches!

You know the scene in the movie The Thing, with Kurt Russell, where they're trying to determine who's an alien by putting a heated piece of wire in a petrie dish of each individual's blood? When it came time to put that heated wire in the alien blood remember how the blood jumped out of the petrie dish to get away? Well...

Those ungrateful little tykes! I started to take another picture of them today and it was just like that scene in The Thing! Baby birds everywhere! Spewing out of that nest like it was on fire! And the ungrateful part is that they didn't stay in the branches I'd so generously given them!! Nooooo! They leapt off those too and fell to the porch floor! Chev and Tem-Tem were beside themselves with joy! Thank goodness they were still behind the ex-pen fence! They were barking, baby birds were cheeping, I was saying uncharitable words about the brats, uh, babies and the Robin parents were screaming at the top of their lungs. It wasn't a pretty scene.

I tried putting the babies back in the nest. As soon as I caught one, put it back, turned to catch another one the one I'd put back would leap out of the nest again. *sigh* All except for one baby. As soon as I put it back it stayed. After about ten minutes of trying to do the futile task of keeping them either in the nest or in the branches, I put the dogs inside and put the two most determined baby birds into the grass in the backyard. One other baby decided he's just stand on the edge of the nest and not try to jump again.

Here's the resulting pics:

Day 13 Ungrateful wretch!  But at least it's obedient. It's trying to get to Momma who's calling it from the other side of the backyard fence.		Day 13 One of two who stayed.
Day 13 Another pic of one who stayed. I didn't dare get closer to try to get a pic of the other one who stayed since it was hunkered down in the nest. I didn't want to disturb this one into trying to leave!

As I was updating this page again, the dogs started a high pitched excited barking/yelping. *sigh*  Yep, another ungrateful baby bird! Couldn't they at least have stayed in the branches I'd gathered for one night??! I put the dogs back inside, where they're staying for the rest of the afternoon, caught the third baby bird and let it go over the backyard fence where I'd last seen the other two tykes disappear.

One fearless baby bird left. It's still the one that I'd taken a couple of pictures of earlier this afternoon. Figuring that it might decide to follow it's siblings before the day is over, I snapped a couple more pics.

These may be the last pictures. We'll see if the baby is still there tomorrow.

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