witches whiskers

I admit to being a little surprised when we noticed that Mrs Robin was back on her nest in mid-August incubating a second brood. I thought we had made her life miserable — we were always startling her off the nest, interrupting feeding time, making plenty of screamy kid noises, etc — but I guess she was pleased with her success and came back for more.

She laid three eggs again and they hatched out somewhere around August 15 or 16. One chick per day. We didn’t spot her for a couple of days around day 8/9 and I thought she might have met her maker. I was a little worried for the chicks, who spent most of the time asleep. But she came back and took up the busy task of feeding once again. This time, she carried on right up until the first chick took flight on August 27.

We came home from a day at the zoo and found chick #1 sitting on the back deck. We startled him and he glided down to the hedge where he stuck around for a while. I watched and waited for Mama to come back to the nest. When she did, she squawked and chirped and looked around. She seemed alarmed that one of her chicks had flown the nest. Even when she flew off into the trees, she stayed close and chirped for several minutes. The chick chirped back.

Chick #2 flew the nest the next morning. I saw him glide off onto the neighbouring lawn.

I am expecting Chick #3 to head out today. I took the photo below at 10 pm last night (using the flash) of him sitting on the edge of the nest. He was in exactly the same spot this morning at 7 am. Working up some courage perhaps.

I took a photo to show the location of the nest on the back deck.

I am going to take the nest down later this week. I want to have a look inside and it will only take her an hours or so to make a new one next year.