It’s Not Even Light Yet…

Disorganized squawking dragged me from a deep sleep and I opened the eye not squished into my pillow…it was barely not-dark. WTH? 

Robins. 

The robins are insane. 

I turned over, disturbing the cat, and listened to them calling in the trees around my neighborhood. 

They have an un-lovely song by many standards, apparently melodic only to their ears. Or maybe it’s not really a song; it may be that it’s just morning chatter over the first worm. 

Robins are certainly the early birds; when I had chickens they were making a racket before the rooster crowed and in Virginia they accompanied me on my dawn run. We were all a bit nuts back then.

The Nest Next Door

This nest has been used for the last five or six years. Such excellent placement, it has survived blizzards, gale-force winds and increasingly scorching summer days. See her tail? It’s probably the mom although the dad would be close by.

The fence in the foreground is fifteen feet away from it and the previous renters were afraid Skeeter would leap from it and get the sitting bird. 

While he has spectacular jumping ability, he is not Jason Bourne, so…no. None of the other neighborhood cats or the resident raccoons have bothered with it, either. 

I am pretty sure Skeeter knows it’s there but he is not interested in trying to get to it and one or two clutches of babies have grown and flown each summer. 

As the average lifespan of a robin in the wild is two years, how do they know this nest is there? Is it handed down from parent to offspring? Sibs? Word of beak? 

Prettiest Nest Ever

One summer at my old house robins made a nest in a hanging flower basket and I documented the babies’ growth. This was in the time before selfie sticks (I think I used an actual camera) and the parents dive-bombed me each day when I climbed onto the railing to take the picture. 

I’m having coffee as I write this. The sun is almost up and the robins are settling down, replaced by the raucous Bullock’s Oriole pair who share the hummingbird feeder with my local hummers. Squirrels are running the fence line and I heard a Sandhill crane.

Maybe we are all just a little insane with the arrival of spring.