Bringing Up Baby (Spotty Robins)
18 June
A week ago “our” three baby American Robins upped and departed from the nest beside the front door. We have since heard Robin activity around the garden and wondered how they were getting along. Well, it seems quite well - late yesterday evening we observed an adult and at least one juvenile active in the Amelanchier tree learning to take unripe berries and also splashing in the waterfall. J had named the hatchlings Blob 1, Blob2 and Blob 3 because that’s about all we saw for a while after hatching. let’s say that this is Blob 1 … with his/her spotty breast and tatty head feathers. The speed of bird development is quite remarkable - less than four weeks ago this bird was still an egg.
Then this morning, for a good half an hour, adult Robin was very busily engaged with trying to feed at least Blob-1 and Blob-2 ripening berries from our Amelanchier tree while the youngsters flopped about fell off branches and generally were incompetent at being self-sufficient. It must be a very tiring thing to be a parent bird … and then you have to go off and do it all over again.
At the other side of the garden at much the same time, a pair of Common Grackles were being busy doing similar care duties for a belligerent teenager demanding to be fed with menaces.
My spin-off, new venture published its second edition yesterday. It contains a number of items on topics that are not strictly “Whilst Out Walking,” but which are likely to be of interest to readers of this Substack. Offshoots and Byways has no fixed publication dates, it will be irregular, appearing when the time seems right and a suitably fascinating selection of items have been assembled. If you would care to wander over and poke around there is a LINK below. Should you like what you see, please consider subscribing:
And we have also had Ruby-throated Hummingbirds once again coming to take nectar from Cuphea (aka Mexican cigar plant) flowers in pots on the deck but so far have not been able to take photographs. They are drawn to these flowers, which might not be natives, but my goodness they are effective.
Lovely photos! It's always wonderful to see the birds fledging.