No, not for me--our robin chicks arrived on Monday! As far as I can tell, without being too invasive, all four eggs have hatched. We've been so lucky to have them here. The nest is below eye level off the back porch, so we can observe them fairly easily. When I peek through the foliage of the climbing rose where the nest is, I now see a wriggling mass of pink fuzzy bird flesh.
Yesterday Doug saw Mama Bird bring over a worm. This week, too, I saw Papa Bird tending to the nest for the first time, along with the Mama.
It took three days for Mama to lay all four eggs (two the first day, then one each for two more days), then 15 days for all four eggs to hatch. By 14 days old, they will apparently be ready to fly. Robin development is amazingly swift!
When she was brooding, Mama Bird took off whenever we were on the back porch, but now that she's got nestlings, she usually stays in the nest even when the [human] kids crash out the back door and tear out into the yard. Her maternal instinct to protect her babies is strong in the face of the hellions!
I will try and take some more pictures of our new additions when they get a little more vertical. In the meantime, flickr has some amazing shots of other people's chicks. Enjoy!
1 comment:
Aw! I'm so sad-we have no nests this year! We had a small kildeer clutch in the grass, but the neighborhood cats got them. :o(
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