Birds of a Feather
We have had a special family move into our backyard this spring. A few months ago, when we were first emerging from the confinement of winter (you know, those cooooold 40 degree temps... ha ha), I noticed a pile of leaves and twigs wedged on top of the electric box on the back wall of our garage. I was confused as to why P hadn't cleaned it up until I realized that it was a pair of nests. (I'm something of a city girl...)
Sure enough, a few weeks ago, we began to notice a Mama Robin hanging out in one of the nests. The electric box is high on the wall, just under the eaves, so it was hard to see much more than the Mama's head as she sat there, but during one of her "grocery runs," I was able to stand on a chair and reach my phone over the nest in order to capture this sight:
Four perfect, brilliantly blue eggs. I tell you what, there is no question as to why every paint company does its best to copy the "robin egg blue" - it is an amazing color! And, much like the difference between an original Monet and a print, the copies just can't do it justice. I'm not even sure my camera phone did it justice....
Anyway, some weeks have past, and the kids have played out in the backyard - only a few feet from the nest - almost every day. And yet that Mama Robin has sat faithful and still, undeterred by the screaming wild ones below. (Probably thinking of all the ways she'll be a better mama than the one who's letting her kids run around outside barefoot, climbing and touching everything, shouting and jumping like crazies, introducing total chaos to an otherwise peaceful golf course community...) We've really enjoyed keeping an eye on her in the nest and then watching her fly off to the fairway to pull worms from the ground.
But we left town this weekend, and when we got back last night and went out back to eat our supper, I noticed that it was unreasonably noisy in the backyard. Other than my own kids, I mean. There seemed to be the chirps of a thousand birds echoing around us, and that was a definite change from before - even with the number of robins and other birds we'd seen. I looked up in the branches of our trees to see if there was a Meetin' going on or something - but then it hit me: the babies!! And sure enough, there was Mama Robin, not sitting on her nest but perched beside it and dropping bits of juicy worms into three sets of tiny beaks poking into the air. From the ground, we could actually see the beaks, and I held Luke up so that he could see a little closer and report back ("They hatched! They hatched!" [wild running around the yard]). And then as soon as Mama flew off, I snuck in for this one:
Wow! Aren't they the ugliest things ever??? But what a miracle. And I'm sure their Mama knows they are beautiful.
This morning, I can still hear the bird racket in the backyard, even though we are inside. I peeked out the window, and I could see that it wasn't just the babies screaming for breakfast (is it just me, or is it a comfort to know that bird babies do that too?), but the Mama was standing on our back fence, just squawkin' away. I decided she must be chatting with the other stay-at-nest-moms, comparing feeding and sleeping schedules, commiserating about the worries and challenges and joys of being a parent, maybe even learning some of the latest research on the healthiest types of worms to feed to little ones. She doesn't know it, but she is my new best friend.
Isn't this life grand?
Sure enough, a few weeks ago, we began to notice a Mama Robin hanging out in one of the nests. The electric box is high on the wall, just under the eaves, so it was hard to see much more than the Mama's head as she sat there, but during one of her "grocery runs," I was able to stand on a chair and reach my phone over the nest in order to capture this sight:
Four perfect, brilliantly blue eggs. I tell you what, there is no question as to why every paint company does its best to copy the "robin egg blue" - it is an amazing color! And, much like the difference between an original Monet and a print, the copies just can't do it justice. I'm not even sure my camera phone did it justice....
Anyway, some weeks have past, and the kids have played out in the backyard - only a few feet from the nest - almost every day. And yet that Mama Robin has sat faithful and still, undeterred by the screaming wild ones below. (Probably thinking of all the ways she'll be a better mama than the one who's letting her kids run around outside barefoot, climbing and touching everything, shouting and jumping like crazies, introducing total chaos to an otherwise peaceful golf course community...) We've really enjoyed keeping an eye on her in the nest and then watching her fly off to the fairway to pull worms from the ground.
But we left town this weekend, and when we got back last night and went out back to eat our supper, I noticed that it was unreasonably noisy in the backyard. Other than my own kids, I mean. There seemed to be the chirps of a thousand birds echoing around us, and that was a definite change from before - even with the number of robins and other birds we'd seen. I looked up in the branches of our trees to see if there was a Meetin' going on or something - but then it hit me: the babies!! And sure enough, there was Mama Robin, not sitting on her nest but perched beside it and dropping bits of juicy worms into three sets of tiny beaks poking into the air. From the ground, we could actually see the beaks, and I held Luke up so that he could see a little closer and report back ("They hatched! They hatched!" [wild running around the yard]). And then as soon as Mama flew off, I snuck in for this one:
Wow! Aren't they the ugliest things ever??? But what a miracle. And I'm sure their Mama knows they are beautiful.
This morning, I can still hear the bird racket in the backyard, even though we are inside. I peeked out the window, and I could see that it wasn't just the babies screaming for breakfast (is it just me, or is it a comfort to know that bird babies do that too?), but the Mama was standing on our back fence, just squawkin' away. I decided she must be chatting with the other stay-at-nest-moms, comparing feeding and sleeping schedules, commiserating about the worries and challenges and joys of being a parent, maybe even learning some of the latest research on the healthiest types of worms to feed to little ones. She doesn't know it, but she is my new best friend.
Isn't this life grand?
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