“Robins—building a nest right up there. Won’t that be fun to watch?”
We stared up at the wisps of dead grass clinging to the juncture of the power line and our house, the beginnings of a bird’s nest.
“I don’t know,” Dick observed. “Doesn’t seem like a good place. We should tear it down before they do much more work.”
I disagreed. “It’s sweet. Let them build,” I argued.
While we dithered, the robins built, and one incredible June morning— there she was—Mama Robin, sitting on her nest, no doubt also her eggs, very close to the kitchen door.
As I predicted, watching the nest was fun. Mama Robin firmly plopped herself in the middle, and when I peeked out the kitchen door, her cocky little head with its bright eyes was readily visible.
But she had hardly settled in when, I noticed, unfortunately, that opening the kitchen door spooked Lady Robin, forcing her to leave her nest and fly to a nearby tree. Obviously this couldn’t be good for her eggs.
I tried opening the door just wide enough to sneak another look. Whoosh!! She flew. She glared balefully at me from a nearby tree branch. Several more attempts yielded the same result. Mama Robin wasn’t having any of it.
Finally, I exited the house via the front door and tip toeing around the house corner, sneaked up on her from a different direction. She flew. There was no way I could fool this exasperating bird.
Was I going to let a tiny robin dictate my life? Apparently, unless I wanted to be a home wrecker and doom the future lives of the eggs, I’d have to quit using the back door.
It was an inconvenience. My lettuce crop and herb garden growing in pots on the deck railing near the back door needed daily watering. Thanks to my idealistic idea of robins and their nests, I frequently had to skip this chore, depending on the moods of that little dictator—the mother robin.
Luckily, the days were rainy when my grandchildren visited so everybody stayed inside, leaving the robin alone.
By the time the eggs hatched I was no longer thinking about this whole thing with any positive feelings. How long would it take for the baby robins to leave the nest? I guessed around a week or two.
Needless to say, the fledglings took far too long to leave the nest. Their cheeping seemed endless as the robin parents flew back and forth, feeding their family. Finally, one July day they all disappeared. With a huge sigh of relief I summoned Dick.
“Knock that dang robins’ nest down before they start a second family,” I said, and he did.
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