I’ve had a cute bird house nailed to my garage for years waiting for birds to move in. No birds. I also have a bat house with no bats but that’s a topic for another day. Birds keep trying to build nests in my awnings and in the gutters…. usually unsuccessfully. Silly birds, those are no places to build a home!
A few weeks ago, to my surprise, a pair of robins decided to move into the bushes in front of the house. Soon they had built a nest and laid eggs. Wow, I finally have birds. Right outside the front window. Now I’ll never get the bushes trimmed!
Today I noticed the female out of the nest so I crept behind the bushes and snapped a few quick shots of the eggs and got a good look at the nest. Whoa, they did all that construction and it’s not visible from the front of the bushes. Sometimes I’m easily amused, but this is truely awesome. They took the twigs that dropped last fall from the walnut tree plus the remains of last year’s partially composted day lillies, added some mud, and made a home. Those birds are quite the engineers.
Robin's Nest
Mama robin was not impressed with me peeking in at her eggs. She few off into a nearby cedar tree and began scolding me. The male was across the driveway in the walnut tree watching me but not making any noise.
Female Robin
Not wanting to further upset her or risk being attacked, I moved away from the bushes.
She flew to the ground and walked back to the nest. It’s only about two feet off the ground. Then she hopped back in the bushes and I could see only her beak. In a week or two the eggs should hatch. Hopefully I can get close enough to get some pictures of them.
I looked up a few robin facts and found:
- Only the female sits on the eggs
- The eggs incubate 11 to 14 days
- Both male and female take care of the young
- They feed their hatchlings with earthworms, insects and berries
- They learn to fly when they are only 15 days old
- Male and females have the same coloring but the male is brighter
- Robins can have up to three broods a year.
This will be fun.
