Always Something to See

One of the nicest things about having a robin’s nest so close is that there’s always something to see when we look out our back door. Sometimes it’s the father hunting and keeping an eye on things.

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You’re watching me, huh? Well, I’m watching you, too!

Often one of the parents is on the nest and four hungry babies are begging for dinner.

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Four Little Beggars

And better yet, sometimes dinner is being served. The father brings back all sorts of things for his babies. Usually it’s something with wings.

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Soup’s on!

And sometimes there’s just an adorable little muppetlike head sticking out of the nest.

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Muppetlike Head

But you can only tell so much from observing the outside of the nest. With an inside view, you can see just how fast the babies are are growing. They are changing on a daily basis.

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Robin Babies on May 29

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Robin Babies on May 30

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Robin Babies on May 31

The parents have become even more vigilant. It’s as if the stakes for them get higher with every insect they feed to their babies. They’ve put so much time and energy into this nest now. I’ve read that most robin babies do not survive. I’m hoping that these gain some measure of safety by living literally beneath our roof, since most predators tend to stay away from the house. If this nest is successful, then during the summer the parents might reuse the nest or build another nearby. And wouldn’t that be fun?

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Nosiest Neighbors Ever

If there’s anything that my husband and I dislike, it’s nosy neighbors. We’re not interested in other people’s drama, and we don’t like to be watched. So we have always carefully avoided looking too closely into the lives of anyone living around us, and we’ve always resented the neighbors who have poked into our business.

But with the arrival of our newest neighbors, our attitude has changed. These neighbors are just too cute for us to ignore. Of course, cute is a subjective term. The robin babies are not that attractive right now. They resemble nothing so much as a pile of rubber chickens.

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Heap of Baby Robins–it’s hard to tell from the picture, but there are four of them.

There’s usually only one adult bird on the nest, so it almost seems like only one robin is caring for the babies. Our spying eyes have uncovered the truth, though. Both parents are involved, as you can see from this rare shot of the two of them together.

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The Two Proud Parents Together

They’ve been working hard to feed their babies. Food deliveries happen often during the day.

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Grub Delivery!

So this is a strange turnabout for us, keeping such close tabs on the neighbors. We know what they’re up to, whether it’s cleaning the nest, hunting for grub, or feeding their kids. I’m pretty sure they don’t like us, but we keep watching them anyway. We must be the nosiest neighbors ever!

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More!

three three

And then there were three.

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Baby Birds!

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Two of the babies have hatched, and there’s another on the way.

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Neighborhood Update

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Our robin neighbors are expecting!

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Birds Near the House

I was walking into the kitchen this afternoon when I saw a flash of orange out the back-door window. As I got closer, I could see that it was the orange bird again. It was hunting for food right near the house.

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Orange Bird: My best guess is that it’s a female northern oriole.

While I was taking pictures of my new orange friend, I was inadvertently irritating my nearest neighbor. Here is a picture of the look it gave me when I pointed the camera in its direction.

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The robin is keeping its eye on me.

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The Outside and Us

  • The robins built a nest on top of the woodpile that’s only a few feet from our back door. They didn’t seem to mind our comings and goings while they were constructing the thing, but now that there are eggs in the nest, the mother seems awfully pissed that we’re around. She can see us through the kitchen window as we go about our daily business. When she’s not rudely giving us the tail, she’s facing right toward our window and giving us the stink-eye. If you’ve ever been the target of a robin’s stink-eye, then you know how unpleasant it is. We keep our recycling bin out on the back porch, and our tendency is to open that door several times per day to throw various things into the bin. It’s hard to remember not to do that. So this robin’s nest is simultaneously a beautiful Nature thing (aw, we’re going to have baby birds!) and an annoyance. It probably won’t seem so annoying once the babies start poking their cute little heads out of the nest, though.
  • After 7 straight days of rain, the grass had gotten out of control in the yard. I had to let my husband mow, even though the violets weren’t even close to done. But before I authorized their deaths, I gathered several vasefuls, so that we could keep the violet’s beauty with us for a couple of extra days.
  • There are caterpillars everywhere. The cold, rainy weather seems to have delayed them, nothing more. They’re cute, but the new rule is that we’re supposed to kill them on sight. Each one we kill now means one less to reproduce later, which could mean hundreds fewer next year. That’s my theory, anyway. I haven’t killed very many yet, though. It’s an easy thing to say but a hard thing to do.
  • I saw a bright orange bird in the woods the other day. I think it was an oriole. If so, it’s the first one I’ve ever seen.
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First Tooth and Other Stories

Dear Kids,

Here are some stories about you.

Livia lost her first tooth on 3/24. It had been loose for quite a while, and she had babied it. But that evening, she came downstairs to show it to me, and it was so loose, I said, “Why don’t you just pull it out?” And she did! It was a bloody thing to watch, but she was so pleased with herself afterwards. The tiny tooth was cute. Livia’s first gappy smile was even cuter.

An excerpt from an argument between Marshall and Livia:

Marshall: I love Mommy more than you love Daddy!

Livia: I love Daddy more than you love Mommy!

Because Livia has been crying a lot and throwing tantrums, the doctor recommended that she make a special bag of treasured items to look at when she’s in a bad mood. I asked Livia to think about which items she wants to put in the bag. She said, “But Mommy, how can I put Daddy in the bag?”

To help counter Marshall’s fear of ghosts, I offered my Buddha to keep you company at night. I told you that if you rubbed his belly it would bring you good luck. So you both rubbed his belly, and then you demanded some additional figurines and action figures. Ultimately you ended up with Buddha, Boba Fett and Hammerhead (from “Star Wars”), Ben Franklin, Johann Sebastian Bach, and a Chinese dragon. They’re all posed atop a Harry Potter book along with a little cup of grass that Marshall started growing as a project in school and beneath a lamp shaped like the bones of a dinosaur head. It’s like a garden party in some bizarre and irreverent sci-fi universe.

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Garden Party

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Is it just me, or does Bach look a little unsettled by his companions?

One day Livia was pretending to be a lion and Marshall was her prey. “Oh,” cried Marshall. “The lion caught me!” Then the lion picked up a box of tissues and replied in her raspy, menacing lion voice, “Here are some tissues if you need them.” What a terrifyingly kind lion she was!

Love,

Mom

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Signs of Spring

Don’t let recent photos of snow confuse you about the season that we’re in right now. It is definitely spring and has been since March. The snow and cold temperatures were unusual for April. They’re gone now, and there are signs of spring all around.

We’ve seen buds and butterflies, not to mention an abundance of blooms. In addition to the deliberately planted crocuses, daffodils, and hyacinths, we’ve also got wildflowers now. Our lawn is dotted with sunny dandelions.

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Sunny Dandelion

The first violets have bloomed, too. I usually try to note when the first one opens, but I goofed that up this year. So I’m not sure which day it was exactly, but I can tell you that several of them were blooming by April 8. The flowers were all quite small and probably had only recently opened.

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One of the First Violets of 2016

But spring has brought some bad things with it, too.

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Two Deer Ticks

My husband and I had been walking around in the woods shortly before we found these ticks on us. We had gone off-path and through the undergrowth, so I guess you could say we were asking to get ticks on us, and we were not surprised to find them. I believe that the big tick in the picture is an adult female and the small one is an adult male. These were easy to spot, even the smaller of the two. It’s the nymphs, that are supposed to be even smaller than these, that really worry us. We didn’t find any nymphs, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any. That’s part of what makes ticks so creepy.

But ticks are a fact of life. They’re everywhere these days (though two fewer today than yesterday). We have no choice in life but to take the bad with the good. While there are some bad aspects to spring, most of it is good. At least it brings us sunshine and flowers!

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An Unusual Combination

cardinalsCardinals, Forsythia, and Snow

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