More Bird Tales

After taking such a hiatus from blogging I find there are a lot of stories that have been fermenting in my head and are ready to come out. Today I'm going to share the woes and successes of our robins.

When we first moved into this house we had a few odd or upsetting experiences with the robins in the area. At first we were delighted when they started building their nests under the eaves of our deck. Momma would fly away every time I walked out the back door, but she would come back soon enough and roost on the eggs. Then we noticed some very strange behavior from another robin. At first I thought it was Momma, but I realized later it had to have been a different one. This robin would fly at the window in the back door repeatedly. I watched and realized the same bird was doing the same thing to a neighbor's window. A friend suggested maybe he was flying at his reflectiong, but the window was under the deck roof and he would come at it from a side angle, so I'm not sure that was the answer. The end result was dirt/mud dabbed all over the door. Another end result was that we found the bird dead under the window a few weeks later. We dubbed him the Kamikaze Robin.

The good news was that the robin in the nest hatched 3 little ones and we watched as they grew. Just as we were preparing to leave for a trip one weekend I heard a thump and found a dead bird on the portico over the front door. There is a very large window there (see yesterday's post). I didn't want a dead bird lying on the roof so we got out the ladder. I climbed up and retrieved the bird and carried it gently to the edge of our yard and pitched it into the ravine. It was after we got back that we found the other dead robin and assumed it had finally knocked itself out on the back door window. I pitched that one into the ravine as well. 2 days later Larry called me frantically. All of the baby birds had tried to fly and one had gotten his leg tangled in some grass or twine in the nest. It was dangling helplessly as all the other birds were squawking away. I grabbed a towel and stepladder and climbed up. Placing the towel over the baby bird I was able to hold him while I extricated his leg. I didn't want to just put him out in the wide open grass especially since we have hawks around here, so I carried him gently to the ravine and placed him in taller grass. This may not have been the best move as the mother spent most of the rest of the day hopping around the yard squawking and calling. I didn't know how to tell her he was fine and only a few feet away! Larry was an immense consolation as I fretted about the mother.

"She's already seen you throw 2 other birds over the edge. She probably thinks that's what you did to her baby!"

Ahh, the sweet condolences of a sympathetic husband. I've only been able to assume that Mother Nature took over and the mother and her family were all united.

Meanwhile we have another family in the back under the deck. If you look closely you can see 3 babies. It seems late in the season for hatchings but maybe it's because we had such a late spring.



Mom is that you?





Baby robins are surprisingly quiet. They don't chirp much, but when they hear me, they tuck down in. Meanwhile, Mom waits patiently in the grass for me to go away so she can feed them. 



2 beaks and one head=3 babies



I don't know about you, but the birds in these pictures don't look very old to me, and yet 2 days after I took the pics I went out for a morning walk. I was struck by how frantic and noisy all the birds were. Several Robins swooped at each other, squawking away. Sparrows frantically cheeped in the strident call they make when they are trying to distract you. Only the goldfinches seemed oblivious. I went to check the nest and much to my surprise it was empty. The babies had flown and the parents were in high protective mode. Momma Robin hovered near the hostas in the front of the house, so I'm guessing the 3 little ones were hiding there until they could get the nerve to actually fly away.

I love watching the birds... as long as they leave my windows alone!



KamiKaze Robins

This past Saturday I decided the time had come to do a dirty job...clean my windows. Not all my windows. Just one in particular.

When you look at this picture you must wonder what kind of a housekeeper am I and how long did it take for this window to look this bad! In answer to the first question, I'm an average housekeeper. On any given day there is a fair amount of dust and Maggie's fur coat lying around, but on any other given day, it has been routinely cleaned up. I don't "DO" windows (as the expression goes) very often, but they do get done. In answer to the second question--How long did it take this window to look this bad?--about a week.

Somewhere around mid-May we noticed a robin perched on the railing outside the window. Every minute or so he would fly up at the window. I know some birds have a hard time understanding windows, but I would think after repeatedly flying at it the robin would have come to realize that there was an invisible wall there and he wasn't gonna get through it. He persisted flying at it until after several days he had managed to put mud on every single window pane. We tried leaving the hall light on so he would know it wasn't a tunnel to somewhere, but he just kept flying at that window.  He never hurt himself, mind you. He just kept working at whatever task he had set for himself.

Now that he has left it alone, I decided to take a chance and clean it.

In the end, I had to admit it was a good idea. The railing was beginning to turn green and the robin had left lovely white polka dots all along the black rubber mat on top of the portico. Actually the white polka dots have appeared everywhere from under the grill on the back patio (how???) to marking every step on the front walk. Our blacktop driveway looks like a runway for birds. And since I'm on the subject, can I just add here that robins leave much bigger polka dots than sparrows!

It's a good thing I like the birds. In fact, tune in tomorrow for some more bird brained tales from the nest.