Birds of a Feather

In our yard each spring, we see nuthatches, juncos, goldfinches, house finches, chickadees, pine siskins, flickers, spotted towhees, brown creepers, sapsuckers, hairy woodpeckers, swallows, bald eagles (only very rarely actually in the yard, but they sometimes settle into one of our tall trees for short periods of time), two kinds of hummingbirds, winter wrens, and probably some others that I’ve forgotten for the moment. But our primary spring bird is the robin. They arrive early and stay late. And they nest and nest and nest, which the others must do, too, but I rarely see their nests. The robins, by contrast, build their nests where we can see them.

For several years, I had a robin who came back each year and built a nest just outside the door to my quilt workshop. She usually had two clutches of three babies each spring, and one year drew it on into the summer with a third one. She didn’t come back last year. But her last nest is still their awaiting anyone who wants it. Another Point Roberts abandoned house.

That robin, like most of our robins, has a bird brain. Which is to say that she has a perfectly good plan for her life’s work but it rests on an unquestioned assumption. Her belief is that the biggest threat in the world to her and her chicks is Ed and me. And because we are so dangerous, these lady robins build their nests right by our back door or the workshop door or the orchard house door so that the moms can keep a close eye on us. Which means that every single time we come in or out of the door, she has to fly up in a panic out of the nest and fling herself over to the over side of the yard so we won’t be thinking that there are babies in the nests and thus we won’t be going to eat them.

Since we are not interested in eating either her or the babies, her life would be a lot easier if she just calmed down and entertained the idea that we are the best friends she has ever had. But we’ve never had a nesting robin that thought that until this year. This new and improved robin set up her nest in the middle of the orchard, in a plum tree, and about 7 feet from the ground. It is right in the pathway of our trek back and forth from the little house to the orchard house, so we pass by her constantly. But, she is not interested in us; she is not concerned about us; she does not think we are going to eat her or her children. Maybe it is just that it takes robins 15 or 16 years to begin to trust people.

In any case, she’s got three little ones out there now and Ed photographed them this morning. He climbed up on a ladder to get this picture and they didn’t even look up. And she didn’t rush back from wherever she’d gone that moment to collect the worm breakfast.