A Little Bird Told Me...

We have been watching since the beginning of April, the raising of a baby robins on our front door.  I've posted pictures on this Blog as they have grown.  It has been fascinating to observe.  

At first, I truly believed they would just be pretty blue eggs in a nest on our front door until the eggs started to go bad, then they would have to come down.  We never saw a mother bird.  Then Claude head pecking along the front of the house one evening when we were watching television in the living room.  It turns out it was the mother and the babies.  Then the trick for us was not to use that front door any more than absolutely necessary.  Let the mother sit with her babies, eventually feed the babies, and help them to grow.  It was fun to watch them move from featherless to fuzzy to feathers.  Then, realization that they might make it and fly away some day while I was gone.  It felt like, after giving up so they could have place and life, we should at least be able to witness their first flight.  But that just might not happen.

So, last week Claude was in Utah visiting his family and I was holding down the fort myself.  I had a haircut appoint on Thursday morning.  I left our home just long enough to drive over to Sadieville for Tyra to cut my hair.  She was able to do it as soon as I came in so I really wasn't go for very long.  As I drove home, a little voice inside my head said, "Check the baby birds."  Okay, I can do that.

I got my car in the garage and then pulled out my cell phone to take a picture of the babies development.  Alas, there was only one bird in the nest.  Their feathers were all complete and the other three must have already left.  I raised my camera to take a picture of our lone baby bird and it hopped up on the edge of the nest.  I really like the picture I got.

He (she) just looked at me for a bit.  Someone who has been following our journey on Facebook as I have posted pictures there, asked that I take some video.  I shifted my cellphone to video and got video as the little fella flew down to the front porch, hopped across and onto the flower bed, and then flew into the yard.  Mother joined him and he was gone.

So happy we decided to leave the eggs even though we thought the mother had abandoned them. Learned that the mother doesn't stay on the eggs all the time or with the babies all the time.  Grateful I got to see the last one leave the nest.  Now Claude and I are truly 'empty nesters' again!!