As promised, I’m going off-topic today to wrap up the story of the baby robins that were living on our front porch.
About two or three days after I took the photos of the babies being fed (and our cat watching them intently), they flew away. One at a time, they would spend a while (the last one took nearly all day) sitting on the edge of the nest and occassionally flapping their wings or bouncing up and down. They looked like a little kid at swimming lessons, trying to work up the courage to dive into the pool.
We missed seeing the first one fly away (we’re guessing that may have been the “brave” baby that had been doing its nest-edge standing and wing-flapping for several days already).
The second one landed on top of our fence and stayed there for the better part of the afternoon, with one or both parents still feeding it. By that evening, it had flown away.
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The third one spent most of that same afternoon practicing its balancing act on the edge of the nest and also still getting fed by one or both parents. In the late afternoon, we looked again and the nest was empty. We’d missed seeing the last baby flying away!
We looked all around the garden to see where it had landed and, at first, couldn’t find it. Then we realized it was sitting on the cushion of one of our porch chairs; it had basically jumped from the nest and landed in the chair below. From there, it hopped / flew to the porch railing and, then, to A.J.’s car.
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From there, our last baby robin flew to the neighbor’s yard where one of its parents was waiting and led it, both of them walking/hopping, away to a safe spot.
Good luck, baby birds!
The Slower Road 