A Home for Four

A mama robin made this nest right on a windowsill right beside the door to my mom’s house. She laid three stunningly beautiful blue eggs. I was worried that all the interruptions from visitors would affect the incubation*, but it did not. She hatched three robust babies, and we all got an up-close view of their development for the next two weeks until they fledged. The last couple of days the it looked like a comedy sketch with the three teen-aged birds spilling out and over the rim of the nest–which is about the the size of a cereal bowl. Interestingly, there were no egg shell bits left behind. I expected to see little shards of robin’s egg blue sparkling out from the crevices of the nesting material. They fledged without witnesses. And left no trace behind.

American robin nest (Turdus migratorius)

*The female incubates the eggs over a two-week period and both parents care for the young. The eggs take around two weeks to hatch and the chicks will fledge when they are about 12 to 14 days old. The female may produce two broods of young each year.