May 13, 2008
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Cheerio! Cheerio!
I was away at a conference last week, and the song “Cheerio! Cheerio!” greeted me on my return, from all the surrounding bushes and trees. Why, you may ask? Because our robins had grown up in my absence, of course.
It only takes two weeks to go from tiny blue egg to frumpy-looking teenager, if you’re an American Robin. My husband took some pics which I will share with you here, so that you will see how our nestlings fared while I was away.
The above photo may be slightly out of focus, but then again, these babies are pretty out of it themselves, aren’t they. Well, they’re on the ball when their mama arrives with a worm, of course, stretching their thin little necks up and opening their big yellow mouths wide. Below is another photo of the nest on that day.
Only a couple of days later, you can really see the change as the nest gets very crowded and the birds’ feathers continue to develop. They start to open their eyes and take a personal interest in affairs around them.
My husband missed the actual moment when these messy creatures leapt from their safe platform into the surrounding landscape. Fuzzy new robins abandon their natal homes before they can actually fly, which seems quite inadvisable to me, but they have never consulted my wisdom on this or any matter. They take up stations under bushes, in window wells, in the shadows of rocks, and so forth, and continue to make loud demands for food from their parents.
Robin parents go along with this arrangement and continue to deliver food to their offspring for some days after the nest is empty. Our last view of a given family is often a crowd of them pestering a parent on a tree branch until they get firmly pecked away. Then they start to fend for themselves, and the parents get busy on brood number two. From what I’ve seen, robins will raise three broods each year if they can get away with it.
I also recently learned that robins flock and are very gregarious during their southern migration and while they are vacationing over the winter. The relatively solitary behaviour I’ve observed in them is natural to them when they are in their northern breeding grounds.
Comments (8)
So cute, I hope they all make it!
funny how much the life of a robin parallels that of a human :p
Ugh. When the teens are hanging out in shrubberies is usually when my terrible cats would strike. Thankfully we have only one old outdoor cat now, who really cannot be bothered with the birds anymore.
@LaMorganna -
Ah well, cats. In my neighbourhood, we always encourage everyone to keep their cats indoors at all times. Cats are ill-suited to bad weather and subject to disastrous encounters with dogs, cars, and other cats; they also kill native wild birds such as goldfinches – and robins, for sure. Cats predate even when they have no need to eat their prey… for me, cats belong on sofas.
I wonder if it’s a domestic cat trait ~ to hunt then they are not hungry. I can’t imagine wild cats bringing down large beasts just because they are ‘there’. I agree with you, that cats belong on the windowsill or sofa. My old Morris was brought up in a different era. He mostly sleeps in the sun now.
Quite the change from the previous post to the end of this one…
Wow, that is so neat that you have the pictures of the stages of the robins’ development. I had no idea it was that fast. I’m having an “empty nest” kind of summer, but UNLIKE Mr. and Mrs. Robin, we won’t be working on a second family! LOL
Hope all is well with you!
Kathi