Seeing off Baby Robins

We’ve been watching a family of robins nest on the post of our back porch. While we can’t see inside the nest, we have observed the adult robins build the nest, search for food and worms, roost on the neighbor’s roof—watching to see if it’s safe to draw near, then approach and feed the babies. We considered the babies as they poked their heads and necks out to be fed as we in turn ate our meals on the porch below. They made quite a racket competing for worms, but otherwise rested silently waiting for pa or ma to return.

This is our view of the nest tucked in-between the beams of the pergola. You can see one of the baby’s heads poking out over the beam, just to the left of the middle miniature light.

Today, we got to witness one of the little birds fly away. While we were eating lunch, I happened to catch him waver from the nest to the porch out of the corner of my eye. We watched him flitter around a bit and rest on the railing when we tiptoed out on the porch to see what he would do next. The five of us must have been too much pressure; he waisted no time with his first flight into the yard and up to the neighbor’s roof. We all jumped up and down cheering him on as he left from there. Mama and papa robin were close at hand making all kinds of racket too. I felt like Wilber waving Charlotte’s spider-babies good bye.

Makenna yelled out, "Good bye. Come back next year."

Our neighbors, had they seen our behavior and most likely not the little bird, would have thought we were nuts.