Robin and Stained Glass Window

by Kat
(Newport News, VA)

Last spring we watched as a robin built her nest in a hanging spider plant on our front porch.

Mama robin was very easy to spot because she had an unusual amount of white feathers in her tail. We were very concerned about the placement of her nest not three feet from our front door, but she seemed very comfortable with a large number of humans and dogs moving past her nest every day.

Mama and her three nestlings seemed to do well, and we enjoyed watching them grow. She even tolerated our peeking into the nest with a long handled mirror now and again to see how the babies were doing.

Two weeks or so after the babies had hatched, we watched them fly from the nest and we'd see them occasionally hunting worms in the flower beds.

This year, we saw Mama again gathering bits of string and twigs and bringing them to our front porch. Her new nest wasn't built in a hanging basket five feet or so off the ground, but on the ledge outside a small stained glass window next to our front door.

This window looks out onto the porch and is right at the base of the stairs leading to the second story of our house.

It became apparent that the poor bird thought she was being attacked every time one of us or one of our three big dogs bounded down those stairs.

She'd startle and fly off each time we used the stairs, so I taped a sheet of paper over the window so Mama couldn't see us.

Unfortunately our mail box is about 6 inches from the window ledge, so the mailman scares her off the nest every day. Mama is a stalwart little bird, and she comes back as soon as the mailman leaves our porch.

I am pleased to announce that this afternoon as I returned home I could hear the first chirps of the new nestlings.

We have two little pink babies so far, and two more eggs waiting to hatch. We are beginning to think that Mama must have been raised by humans because she seems to have very little fear of us.