Bye Bye Birdies

One of the highlights of our summer was the Robin's nest right outside our kitchen window. Remember that tree I really wanted to cut down, but then we discovered the nest in the tree? Soon after we discovered the nest we realized there were 3 beautiful blue eggs inside. Of course it was at this time that Buddy's life became hell. Every time he walked out the back door the mama bird would squawk at him over and over. She would fly off the nest and dive bomb him over and over or sometimes Daddy Robin would do the grunt work. If he dared to just lay down to relax near the door then they would unleash a holy terror of madness at him. It was highly amusing to see Buddy lying down and this bird standing a foot or two away on the ground near him and yelling at him over and over while he appeared to not be bothered. I have to say I garnered quite a lot of grief from Mama Robin myself sometimes when I would abruptly open the back door. For about 3 weeks Mama sat her vigil. We looked up online to see how long it should take. We got a little nervous that the eggs might have died, since they seemed to be taking a little longer to hatch than we expected.

And then one day I looked out the window and I saw this- these were taken on July 8th.

Tiny tiny little baby robins.

Mama still held her vigil.

The kids and I headed off to Cape Cod for about a week and we were very curious about the birdies. These pictures were taken on July 17th, just 9 days later. Suddenly we had 3 more voices into the Robin chorus outside the window.

Now Daddy Robin took more of an active role in caring for the babies. We had a fun time trying to figure out the difference between the two parents. We decided that Mama bird was still carrying a bit of her baby weight on her and she was a bit fluffier under her belly.


We had a slight panic one morning. The kids burst in to wake me up all upset that Buddy had killed Mama Robin. [now- while upset- I kinda couldn't blame him- they were really harassing him]. So I went downstairs and sure enough at the bottom of the back steps lay a dead Robin and standing next to the Robin was a very smug cat. We were very nervous about who would take care of the babies and were quite relieved when we saw both parents visit the nest during the day.

This one makes me laugh- I was so busted!
I find this next series interesting I believe this is Papa Robin bringing in a snack.





A few days later we figured they would be leaving the nest soon since all 3 of them barely fit in the nest by the end.

One morning we came downstairs and the chorus was silenced and the babies were gone. I saw Papa Bird come to the next with breakfast, look around quite surprised at the emptiness, and then fly off. As we headed out the door to bring the kids to camp that day Jessica said, "Mommy something is in the pool". Yes, we went to investigate and it was one of the baby birds. Seems his first flight was not very successful. It made us all a little sad. But we didn't see the other two so we like to think they were more successful. And Buddy was kind enough not to bring us any dead baby robins.

Letterboxing

The kids and I decided to enjoy some beautiful weather and go out and go Letterboxing. In case you still don't know what that is- go check out this link to learn more. We started out at the one located just behind our library. This worked out fine since we had some books to return. We ended up finding a hitchhiker in that first letterbox. I had never heard of one until Kim mentioned it. A hitchhiker is an extra stamp. You are supposed to take that stamp with you and then leave it in a different letterbox. We were pretty excited- especially since we had plans to go to another letterbox immediately. Here we are at the first stop- Justin is holding up the hitchhiker.

We then went to another one in town. It involved a rather big hike uphill. So we took a break part of the way...

... and enjoyed the view of our small town from up above.



Um, but truth be told we bailed out and didn't finish the hike to the letterbox. But we still had this hitchhiker so headed to another one in town that is located just behind the middle school. It was a little harder to find than we expected but we found it!


Phew! That finished up June. Good thing we don't really do anything during the summer. Oh wait... hmm I think I have a fair amount more blogging to do.

Dance Recital

Really trying to catch up on blogging! Ack! Sometimes I think I should just start fresh but then there are memories and pictures that I want to record- so that if I every get around to making my blog book I will have all of these things recorded.

In June Jessica had her dance recital. Every year she says this is the last year she will do dancing and then as soon as the recital comes she changes her mind. This year she had a Can-Can number that was so great and fun- it was my favorite.






Her second number was a jazz number...




Of course I don't have the video loaded up to share. Amusingly when I pulled out the video camera to bring to her recital I rewound it a little to make sure it was lined up and what to my surprise do I see? but last years recital video. Guess we don't video as much as we used to.