The Robins

A couple of weeks before Easter, I noticed this robin hanging around our garden acting a bit suspiciously. Every time I came out she froze and eyed me, usually with a bit of moss or hair in her beak. After a few days I figured out where she was building the nest. Beside our back patio door there is a water butt, on top of this the resident gardener had left two full bags of compost and an almost empty one that was split down the side. The robin was building her nest inside the top compost bag. At first I begged of Twitter what should I do? This wasn't as clever a place for a nest as the robin seemed to think. What about our garden hose and our trowel? Then I stole a peek. She'd obviously worked really hard to build such a spectacular structure. I hadn't the heart to move her on. I negotiated the loan of the gardening equipment to the robins for as long as they needed it and we did our best to leave them to it. After about a week, I noticed the male bringing food to the female robin. In the evening time he came to her and they both flew out together for about an hour. We slyly stole a pic to see what was going on. Four eggs! A couple of days later - a fifth was also there. Then everything went very quiet. The female spent all day in the nest for about another ten days, only leaving for a bath and a bite in the evening. The male came and went a bit with worms for her. It was intersting that they never flew directly in our out of the nest. They always perched on a tree on the opposite side of the garden, or the back of a patio chair first. Then they would duck in and out when they were sure nobody or other birds saw them.

One evening I thought I heard a tiny chirp from the nest. it was hard to tell though, there were loud nesting martins and sparrows all around in the eaves of the houses but the next day both robins were very busy coming and going with bits of worms and taking out bits of shell. We were desperate to look but didn't want to disturb them. Then the big wind came. The top of the bag, or 'the roof' kept blowing up, the entire bag looked at risk of flying away. I pulled over the patio table and taped a refuse sack between the parasol and the table to create a type of windshield. The robins watched me closely and seemed to figure out that I was creating shelter even if they thought it was accidental. They were still flapping about worried though, the bag was still looking precarious. George came home, saw my construction which was blocking the backdoor and grabbed a few tentpegs. He stuck them through the corners of the bag into the one beneath. While he was doing that he managed to stick his phone in and get this:

Four baby robins!

After that, other than the parents flying in and out with food and debris, everything was quiet. Robin chicks are surprisingly unchirpy. Up above in the eaves, the young martins were busy being schooled in flight. making ever increasing circles in and out of their nest. Then two days went by and I saw no robins at all. I grew concerned. On the third or fourth day we looked - they were gone. All of them. All that was left was the one unhatched little egg at the bottom of the nest. I was worried that a cat or bigger bird had gotten to them but the nest and bag were undisturbed and there was nothing on the ground around it. A quick Google informed me that robins are ready to fly and fend for themselves as soon as they outgrow the nest. Mom and dad simply entice them out with some worms usually in the morningtime. My nestlings had obviously flown. I was sorry I missed it. The six year old and I printed out these pictures and he wrote a couple of sentences about each. We pasted them onto a board and he brought it and the empty nest into school. He was very happy to be the centre of attention with his little project and the resident gardener was happy to get his tools back.