our bird friends

We have been on quite the exciting journey the last few weeks!

Fro the second time since we moved here we were privileged to have a family of birds right outside our front window. We spent literally HOURS staring out at the little bird babies as they were fed and cared for by their parents, talking about them and speculating about their feelings. We learned a lot about not only robins, but love, growing, and life.

And we took pictures to document it all. :)

Side note: these pictures were all taken either from inside our front window (the grainy ones) or when the parents were away from the nest. They were extremely protective of their babies and would not even feed them if they noticed us watching outside the window. And if you got too close to the nest, the mother would swoop down and attack you!

Anyway, here are the pretty blue eggs. We watched the parents make the nest, and then the mother sat on it for about 10 days we think.

And here are the birds on the day they hatched! All of a sudden the parents were perched on the side of the nest and kept picking stuff out, so we knew something was going on! aren't they cute, the little fuzzballs!

The mother brought them food and then noticed us watching, so here she is sitting on them with the food in her mouth.

3 days old

6 days old and so weird looking!

7 days old, they grew so fast!!

8 days old and starting to grow more feathers. About this time we saw something really cool. There was a big rainstorm, and the mother kind of crouched over the nest with her wings spread to keep her babies dry. It wasn't like other times when she sat on the nest- the babies were too big for her to really sit in the nest and cover them with her body. So for who knows how long, she sat in what seemed to be an uncomfortable position with her wings slightly spread to protect her little birds. The things we mothers do for our children!

asking for food, and the mother giving us her evil glare

The mother trying to sit on the nest still, but the babies were getting too big and kept trying to push her off it seemed like! Does this ever happen with our children?? :)

12 days old and filling up the nest!

they were being fed constantly at this point! luckily we had a lot of rain so there was an abundant worm supply!

Learning to fluff those new-feathery wings! It was funny, there was one bird who always tried to sit on top of the others. A lot of the time we could only see two little birds in the nest, so one was being pushed down! More on that little runty one later.

13 days old

15 days old- just chillin' waiting for mom to bring some food. what a life!

And then at 18 days old, we looked out the window and there was only one left! We think this was the runty one, who hadn't been peeking out of the nest as much and was afraid to fly off with it's siblings. He kept stretching his legs and fluttering his wings, but he didn't leave!

We watched him for over an hour, as he hopped to the other side of the nest ad turned around, and as his mother kept bringing him worms still. He was her last baby left so he finally got spoiled!

And then suddenly he made the dive! He tried to spread his wings, but he went right to the ground! And then it was so cool, right away the mom and dad birds swooped down to the low branches of the tree and called encouragement to him. I got this picture of him hopping around on the lawn. By later that day we saw him with the parents flying up to the top of the fence, and just today we saw him flying up into our tree. We haven't seen the other two babies, that we know of. Maybe this little runt is just sticking around here with his parents for a while. Cute!

And there you have the story of our birds. They have made spring extra fun!