Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Baby Robins - Day 3

Well, as of right now (2:40 pm), we still have only 3 babies hatched... and their parents are doing a wonderful job taking care of them.


It's been very cool to see how the parent robins really seem to be getting comfortable with us taking such interest in them. Actually, the mother robin has been pretty OK with us for awhile. This morning, while I was taking the above picture of her babies, she returned and sat patiently on a higher branch of the tree and waited for me to finish. I (of course) took the opportunity to get a quick photo of her as well. She was amazingly calm and collected... even with breakfast waiting in her beak!!

THE FATHER BIRD, on the other hand, has taken a little longer to be OK with us being around. I can't complain... he's doing a great job as a father protecting what is his. If you've seen any of the video's I've posted before, you might have noticed some pretty firm chirping in the background. Those warnings were coming from Dad. :) However, yesterday evening I wanted to check on the nest because we had had some pretty good rain showers. Dad stayed on his usual post on our roof above the tree and simply watched me. Oh, he watched me very closely, no doubt,... but I didn't get the usual warnings I've become used to. I like to think that after watching us for the past 2 weeks, he's seeing that we are posing no threat to his family.

As I said, we had received some pretty good rain showers yesterday, and at least a drizzle most of the day. Mother bird did another amazing job at keeping her newborns dry and warm!

Of course, Mom wasn't able to run around getting food for herself or the babies yesterday with all the rain,... so I was happy to see that Dad REALLY stepped up and made sure they had what they needed. We saw him all day flying back and forth with food. When he was at the nest, I saw him feeding some to Mom, and then she would get up briefly to share some with the babies. It was so awesome to watch!! In this first picture, you can see the back of the mother bird with her head down feeding the babies, and Dad standing watch holding more food in his beak.
In this next picture, the mother has resumed her post and Dad continues to stand guard.

Well, that's pretty much the up-date at this point. I did take a quick video of the babies this morning, but they're not too active. Just one little guy trying to get his head out from being buried in the nest... :)



Keep watching for more updates... we're still anxious for egg #4 to hatch!! :) This has been SO fun to share with all of you!

2 comments:

bedonts said...

seriously.....SO. COOL! You should make sure you have these amazing videos saved to a CD so you can always have them to share! So much fun!

Schiffman Family said...

Miss Heidi's Preschool LOVES seeing this amazing miracle of life. This is what they each had to say. Thanks Sandra for being so amazing!!! Love you. Heidi

I like to see your birds.
Allyson
Thank you to the daddy bird for bringing worms to the babies. Harmony
I hope you had fun taking pictures of the birds.
Kailee
I glad to see the baby birds. They are so cute sticking their heads up thinking the camera is their mommy with food.
Adah
Thank you for showing us the birds. I like them when they popped out thinking the camera was food. That's all--see ya.
Kempton
I really like the birds.
Mateo
I like that the birds are pink. Ramzy
I like the birds.
Blake