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.