Our resident Robin family

Since we moved here, in Birdland (as Aldershot is lovingly called) we had the opportunity and humbling honour to watch birds nesting around our house. If it's in the bushes around the house, or under the roof, I scarcely recall a year without birds. For a few years in a row, we had a family of doves - and one year they had 3 series of baby birds! It was always spectacular to watch the entire process.

Around 2010, Robins decided we are harmless and they can safely raise their family with us. I am not sure if it's the same family or not... all I know is that there is a family of Robins laying eggs every year in a nest close to the house.

This year they took residence on top of our backyard TV, which is mounted right under the roof, with a mere 20-30 cm between the top of the TV and the roof bottom. Apparently even the shape of the TV box is what they are looking after, so it was with awe we watched them tirelessly building the nest, straw by straw.

I couldn't check when the eggs were laid, so I missed that Robin-egg-blue this year! However, when we came back from Arizona, I saw the Mommy and Daddy bringing worms. I knew the babies must be out, although I could see little.

About 10 days ago I started to take daily pictures (it's a long post)

May 18: there is four of them, but you can barely see two.

May 20: not much of a change

May 21: Sleeping and in action, this is probably the first born

May 22: They're growing fast, and they've started to look better :)

May 23: Feathers are growing in, look at that :) Eyes are still closed shut... patience is the name of the game

May 24: I was still using the phone, so pretty impossible to get a close-up shot of the Mamma Robin, so please excuse the quality of the 1st picture. All four are very hungry; it's so cute how baby animals have a feature that's huge on them until they grow into it (for dogs it's the ears :) for the baby birds - the beak!).

May 26: They are getting bolder every day and still very, very quiet

May 27: the big ammo came out, I took the Canon, with the tele-lens. Now we can see something (pictures are taking from inside, behind the glass door to the patio)

May 28: Fully grown wings! I knew the time when they are going to be out of the nest will be soon.

May 29: When we came back from the farmer's market, they were still in, still quiet... but flexing those wings a lot.

Sadly, by early afternoon, in a space of 3 hours - they left the nest. We missed the moment (I would have loved to see how they hop out of the nest!). I know they are still safely somewhere on the ground, in the wooded area of the backyard (the space between our yard and our neighbour's is separated by a line of tall cedars, we have a mini-forest in our backyard), I saw one of them hopping around and spreading its wings and jumping on low branches.

I hope they will survive - I am also very happy the four of them got to this point in their lives.

Bitter-sweet feelings... for birds I've know for less than 2 weeks (maybe 6 in total, if you count when their parents started to build their home). I wonder what kind of feelings I'll have when our own nest will become empty, with the little bird flexing his wings out in the real world...

Then, just like Scarlet O'Hara says, "I'll think about this tomorrow".