When the eggs hatched, both parent birds were very busy feeding the three babies. They grew quite tame in their enthusiasm to get enough food.
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In March 2002, a pair of robins checked out the nesting box in my garden
and started carrying nesting material into it. Then they disappeared for a
week, but they came back and Mrs Robin laid her eggs in it. When the eggs hatched, both parent birds were very busy feeding the three babies. They grew quite tame in their enthusiasm to get enough food. |
| On the weekend of 20-21 April, we moved my compost bin so that we could paint the fence. The compost and the ground where it had been were full of worms and wigglies and like lunch at the Ritz to a mother robin. |
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| We were also putting out food - bread, seed, fat balls and nuts. Even so, Mrs Robin is not the round, Christmas card robin that she was a few months ago. She is looking quite thin and bedraggled... |
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... and this is one of the reasons. There were three babies and for this
one to be so high up, looking out, he must be sitting on his brother. This photo was taken on 27 April 2002. By this time, the father robin had disappeared. I don't know if both parents normally share feeding of young. I hope one of the local cats hasn't got him. On 28 April 2002, I heard Mrs Robin tweeting very insistently. She was sitting high up in the gutter and sounding very distressed. I went out, but couldn't see anything wrong. There were no cats or magpies in the garden and I looked underneath the nesting box and couldn't see any babies fallen out. Then she flew over my head and landed on the fence. I looked where she landed and there was a baby robin. She led me to her baby! |
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Between us, Stuart and I managed to catch the baby and pop him back into the box, but it was like putting a child back on top of a slide. He launched himself out again, followed by the other two. There followed an unequal competition between human beings and baby robins, with Mrs Robin hopping about, tweeting.
Then one baby flapped his way to the top of the fence and fell over into my neighbour's garden. Mrs Robin was now really very distressed. I went round next door and asked if I could look in her garden as one of my robins had fallen over. She was very kind and let me trample her flower beds. The first thing we found was a big grey cat lurking under a bush so that was chased out of the garden, but we couldn't find the baby. Stuart was still on my side of the fence and he thought the baby managed to flutter back over the fence. I hope so - I hope he's not inside the cat.
At that point, we abandoned the search, and I left my neighbour in peace. She said it made a change from small boys wanting their ball back. All three baby robins were now fluttering round the garden and it was time to stop interfering and let nature take its course. I kept guard for a bit and made sure no cats or magpies came into the garden, but there was no point in trying to post the babies back into their box.
The family spent the night in the evergreen bush at the bottom of the garden and I haven't seen the babies since. Now (3 May) Mrs Robin is still fetching food and carrying it off, but unless she brings her offspring to see me, I won't know whether any or all of them survived.
EMERGENCY CARE FOR BIRDS and FAQs
Vanessa S Blake
3 May 2002