Watching the robins like a hawk

Robins are good parents. Both mom and dad brings food to the chicks. When the adult robin alights on the nest, the movement prompts sightless hatchlings to reach for the sky and open their beaks. They cheep, too, a tiny sound but one that the parents recognize. The adult robin regurgitates a diet of worms and insects into the outstretched mouths. They make the trip from nest to great outdoors back to nest up to 100 times daily. They seem insatiable, these young ones. They grow as big as their parents within a month. They are klutzy when they try to fly and this is the most dangerous time in their young lives. A fall can be fatal because parent robins can't boost the kids back into the nest. They fall prey to cats and foxes and raptors. Humans are told not to pick them up and put them back in the nest because the human scent will cause the parent to shun the offspring. Not so, say the experts. Mom and dad know their kids by sight and sound and not smell. To catch falling birds, Chris draped a blanket over a trash can three feet below the nest. Our robins' nest is accessible but most are not. It was built on top of our porch's solar control box. It's just out of my reach if I wanted to reach it. The adults buzz us humans as we water the plants or barbecue a steak. Unlike blue jays, robins seem content on close encounters. Blue jays peck at the heads of interlopers. The shock troops of the bird world. The time from robin egg to hatchling to fledgling is a short one. Humans take note. Thirty days for robins. Thirty years for the process in the typical human nest. Robins should be glad they don't have basements.