Over the past few weeks, we have had the pleasure of watching a pair of robins raise a family. Today’s post will show some of the pictures I took as the chicks developed.
The story began in June, when we observed that a mother robin had decided to build a nest near our garage door. That location was inconvenient, but proved satisfactory. We did our best to accommodate her without unduly complicating our work, hoping to see a chick hatch and grow up.
After some weeks, our patience and understanding were rewarded. We could often see a chick with its beak elevated over the side of the nest. Because the weather was quite hot at the time, I imagined the chick getting too hot under the mother bird and gasping for cooler air. Melissa, the kids, and I began paying much closer attention at this point.
It reminded me of the time I was staying with a graduate school friend in Calcutta, India. Although I had only the mildest of colds, his mother and aunt insisted on bundling me under such a warm, heavy blanket that the treatment was making me feel worse than the problem. Every time I attempted to extend an arm or leg out from under the insulation to radiate some heat, one of them would spot the attempt and tuck me back in. Only with my friends assurance that I would be honest about any genuine worsening of my troubles, would they release me from their tag team maternal care. Out of their earshot he explained to me that Indian mothers jump at the chance to care for an ailing child and that if they caught me looking at all unwell I risked being confined to bed indefinitely. I felt genuine sympathy for the chick under the warm feathers of the mother robin.
At one point, the mother departed to find food and I was able to snap a picture of the chick. The fact that it could survive without feathers and without being tucked under a living feather comforter convinced me I had correctly interpreted its gasping action.
Apparently, the mother robin laid two additional eggs at a later date, because two more chicks appeared in the nest, noticeably less-developed than the first. One day I got the treat of seeing the father robin bring a beakfull of caterpillars to feed the chicks. He was carrying such a quantity that it was hard to imagine how he picked them all up at once. The mother sat on the back edge of the nest and he dropped caterpillars into the upright, open mouths of the chicks.
I wasn’t able to get a picture of the feeding, but I later caught a picture of the three chicks waiting, unsupervised, for their next meal. The chicks sat motionless and soundless, in great contrast to the chicks in the hen house. I suspect that the robin chicks have the instinct to avoid making any movement or sound that might attract a predator.
As they got older and their heads were elevated farther above the edge, they began to look almost like some type of pitcher plants growing up from the bottom of the nest.
When the oldest chick was fully fledged, it began to perch on the edge of the nest, but we never saw it flap its wings or make any of the preparatory movements one imagines to be necessary before it attempted its first flight. Instead, after a few days, we simply realized we hadn’t seen any activity and, upon inspection, we found the nest empty. It was sadly anticlimactic.
Later on, while mowing the grass, I spotted a young robin hopping away into the bushes. There is, of course, no way to know if it was one of the chicks, but I choose to believe it was – if for no better reason than that it gives the story a proper denouement.
Barring any necessity to remove it, we will probably leave the nest in place in order to increase the probability of seeing another family of birds use it. We were concerned that our activity at the garage front would scare away the birds, but it seems not to have been an issue.
Our family would find it most enjoyable to observe the process repeating next year.
Such a wonderful gift to be able to watch these developments of nature there in Fairbanks – your own babies fledging, your egg layers producing, and the robins reproducing. All so very different, yet alike in successful goals. No two exactly like their parents, yet all remarkable to witness in their growth.