The houses here in the neighborhood are quite close to the next one, and are made of bricks. There is a rain pipe coming down from the eaves, against the house, with an elbow-bend in it near the eaves, making it a very appropriate place for robins to build a nest. The eaves extend about a foot, which keeps the nest dry. The eaves make a 'ceiling' so the bird can stand on the edge of the nest and not bump its head on the 'ceiling'. The nest is horizontal and resting on the elbow-bend, sort of a built-up penthouse for The Robin Family.
The pair of robins decided to build their nest on the neighbor's house, right where I can see it from my front door. When they first started to build it from the 'ground up', they would come flying in with a mouthful of a few strands of hay, oats, or tall grass (it was hard for me to know which it was, because I didn't want them to see me at their new house lot). The long strands would hang over the pipe. They did this for a few days, then seemed to abandon it. But shortly after that, they began to come with mud to make the nest solid.
The robins' nest is about fourteen feet from my front door, and I try to go in and out of my house without too much noise or activity, so the robin won't fly out of the nest. One of the robins was on the nest most of the time for whatever length of time it takes to incubate the eggs.
Well, within the last week, there was hatching going on, because I found a half-shell of a robin's egg several yards away from the nest. At first I couldn't see the babies and it's possible only one hatched the first day. There may be four, their long necks stretching for Mommy's food. I've been watching several times a day when I can.
I happened to see one day that the parent robin came with a hefty little earthworm hanging from its beak, and the bird stood over four wide-open mouths, and down the hatch it went to one or two of them. The other parent suddenly came and flew up to the nest, so the other birdies weren't too disappointed. At one mini-minute there were two robins on the edge of the nest! That made me smile a lot.
I noticed that the robins do a lot of chirping when they are near and coming with food, to notify each other. They could also be chirping warnings as they leave the nest if something or someone is approaching their nest. By the way, those long strands are still hanging down on both sides of the nest, for about nine or ten inches! Perhaps I ought to read about The Lives of Robins!
I'll see at the Corner Post ...
No comments:
Post a Comment