A robin pair have been busy on our backdoor rain spout this spring. Mom left the nest early this week and she and dad have been flying in and out, foraging on the lawn (we’re keeping the cat inside) and then perching on the rim of the nest with a beak full of worms. Yesterday I saw a tiny robin face peering out of the nest when mom and dad weren’t home. Those wild kids.
Here’s to mothers everywhere. They are, as poet Agha Shahid Ali wrote, “the breath drawn after every line.”
Disaster. As I was posting this picture, I heard a commotion at the nest. I ran to the door and found a crow at the nest with the robins in full attack. The crow flew away, but one of the babies had fallen out of the nest. I called a wildlife shelter, but only got an answering machine, so I put on gloves and mask, and put the baby back in the nest, with mom and dad dive-bombing me the whole time. I had to jostle the nest a bit to get the baby back in.
Question for any avian experts: Should I have left it alone? Mom is back on the nest now, but both parents are still really disturbed.
This marks the first anniversary of my Mother’s death. I wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t perfect. Our lives were not always filled by the musical whisperings of “talk to you soon sweetie-pie”
Yet, she is my Mom; and but for the sacrifice of her blood and bone; and the angst of her next 50 years that it took me to find my wings; there I would be, mere feathers in the mouth of a stray cat.
I say to my Mother, if she can hear me, and her Mother’s Mother, and so on… thanks! The weather is fine here, and life goes on…
Althea. For a bit, in Southern Europe, I raised hawks and owls. Once your scent is on the chick… bye, bye. Smart to put on gloves: once you get your scent in the nest, it becomes a ticking time bomb. Nothing more I know from limited experience that you can do, unless you want to bring a chick inside and raise it 24/7.
On the bright side… to all those mothers looking to adopt fallen and stray chick, have you noticed that often two or three hatch? To everything a purpose.
Althea,
Westsound Wildlife Shelter has a posting on what to do when you find baby birds out of the nest. Heres the link http://www.westsoundwildlife.org/wildlife/wildlife.html.
Basically what you did is OK, especially if baby is still in the nest now a couple of days later.
Thanks for that information! We almost blew it completely it later that evening, when we saw all three chicks–including the one I returned to the nest–craning their little necks upward with wide open mouths. We were sure they’d been abandoned and were starving so we ran around the yard finding worms, intending to care for the birds ourselves. Fortunately we hestitated after reading that babies have to be fed 400 times a day. Just before dark, the mother came back to the nest and she and dad have been back and forth ever since. Whew.
The article you linked to is really helpful. I hope the kids fledge soon so we can stop our anxious vicarious parenting.