The Not-Empty Nest

As I promised in yesterday's post, here are some pictures of the robin's nest that was built on the railing of the deck behind our house in the spring of 2004, camouflaged by some overhanging leafy lilac branches. You met the mother robin yesterday; now meet her offspring.

I took pictures of the baby robins at different stages of development, and they went from looking rather bald and blind and helpless, like this...

...to more feathery and alert, like this...

...to almost ready to fly away from the nest, like this...

Aren't these little guys just the cutest little things?

I worried so much about these baby robins' survival, because that nest would have been a piece of cake for a cat to find. We had a picnic table pushed right up against the deck railing, so all kitty would have had to do was to hop up on the table top and saunter right up to it. But miraculously, these babies survived their time in the nest. At least I hope they did: they were getting really close to maturing, and then we had to go out of town for a few days; when we returned, they were gone. The funny thing is, when I saw that the nest was empty, I missed them! I missed checking up on them every day--they were almost like pets to me.

Anyway, I think I got some great shots of that little filled-up nest. They remind me of something out of "Ranger Rick Magazine," if I do say so myself. (I used smaller pictures when I posted this earlier, because you used to be able to enlarge photos by clicking on them--but eBlogger has changed and I'm not sure that works anymore. I decided to redo the post with enlargements, in order to do these pictures justice!)