A Spring Tale

9 years ago

This spring a robin decided to build a nest in the viburnum outside my kitchen window. I enjoyed watching this family develop. The viburnum was so thick I couldn't get many pictures of the nest, but it was obvious that sharing a nest with aggressive siblings was not very romantic.
{{gwi:677697}}

Day after day, the parent birds tried to satisfy the babies' seemingly unquenchable appetities. The babies seemed to be getting quite fat, and late one morning I saw one venturing outside the nest.

Soon another ventured out, and later that day the nest was empty. I thought that I wouldn't see them again, but several days later I saw the mother robin with a baby, seemingly showing it how to peck on the ground. But the baby flew to a lower branch of the bush where it was born, and just plopped down, when papa came and fed it a worm. That same day I discovered another baby come back to the lower branches waiting to be fed.

The next day I saw the mother with two babies in the grass. I don't know what happened to the third. It was apparent that mother and baby sometimes had disagreements.

But mother was still attentive to and proud of her babies:
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Soon I will awake and find them all gone, but the biggest lesson I learned is that, with robins too, babies may leave the nest, but still come back to freeload. Parental chores do not end so abruptly.

This post was edited by mantis__oh on Thu, May 22, 14 at 9:45

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Comments (6)

jean_ar
9 years ago
haha, nice story mantis, and very nice photos that I really did injoy.Apparently you don't have cats around your house for them babies to still be alive, unless mama Robin ran them off.

jean
Nancy
9 years ago
Love your spring tale! DH & I were dining outside at a restaurant & saw a mother & fledgling quite close. The baby was demanding food & mom was doing her best. Baby with all his fluff looked bigger than her, & obviously quite capable of getting his own food, but he was very demanding.
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mantis__oh
Original Author
9 years ago
Nancy, I didn't realize that the babies were fed for such a long time after leaving the nest. At least two weeks I've seen it.

Jean, I'm afraid a cat in the neighborhood may have gotten the third baby. A friend of mine, a great bird lover, does her best to chase cats away.
Maryl (Okla. Zone 7a)
9 years ago
I'm glad you posted your story and it had a happy ending...... I worked at a business that had a short bush right in front of the window I sat by and was lucky enough to see the whole process from nest to first flight. When the babies took off from the nest I was very nervous for them. And yup, Jean is right about the cats. I've owned at least a dozen cats and fortunately only one has been a birder. Indeed he just got a fledgling Robin the other day. He has also gotten a nest of mice, a rat, a mole and a rabbit among his good deeds. Mother nature at work......Maryl
Julia WV (6b)
9 years ago
It is a life cycle and Natures way of keeping balance I guess.
Our neighbors dog chases anything it sees like a bull in a china shop. Took down a section of our rock wall, dug underneath one of our pieces of equipment for the tractor, trampled through the gardens and recently ripped off the siding of my sisters shed trying to dig underneath.
organic_kitten
9 years ago
What a nice story with photos to illustrate. Ypu never disappoint us, Mantis.

kay