I don’t have a new photo to share, but this afternoon, I saw a young robin pecking the ground in the orchard. It had the slightly mottled chest coloring of a juvenile. It didn’t stay long, it quickly flew away, but it brought me a moment of hope. I can’t prove it, but I think it might be the young robin that I tried to help last week. That’s why I am resharing the last photo of that fierce baby, taken on June 21st. I feel that witnessing its presence in the garden is a gift.
Today has been a day that needed a little sign from heaven, a little miracle. The Senate passed by a tie-breaker vote its version of the big horrible bill that will kill so many people who lose healthcare, if it is now passed by the House. I don’t want to say anymore about that right now, but every call, every email, every public witness is like a prayer for hope, for goodness, against cruelty and greed. We are facing so much destruction and pain. But I feel the presence of Spirit with all of us who do whatever we can for our common good, for our intertwined life here on this planet.
This morning there was more excitement concerning the sole surviving baby robin. It had walked out from the nest onto the nearby beam, even into the next section of beam. So it was alive! But the parents went back and forth calling several times. I was watching through the glass of the back door, hoping that they would find it and feed it. Then, finally, one of the parents brought the baby a big mouthful of worms–and just as it got them it its mouth, it fell down to the deck below. There it sat, seemingly stunned for a long time. I kept watch, not wanting it to be gotten by some predator, but also not knowing what to do. I even put in a call to Avian Haven, but it was before business hours. (8:30 a.m.) I wondered if it was injured.
Finally, I went outside, and went near to it, and it started to walk away. It seemed able to walk, but it never flapped its wings like it was trying to fly. Too young I think. Only 9 days old. So I gently picked it up and put it back up into the nest. And it seemed like that might work, and the parents came back and forth, and fed it up on the ledge, where it had once again walked on to. The parents were both very solicitous and sometimes called to the chick, and sometimes scolded at me. When Avian Haven called back (after I had put it back in the nest) they suggested that if the parents were still attending to the chick, it was best to leave it with them, and not take it away.
However, would you believe it? It once again fell or jumped from the beam and landed on the deck again. It was lying on its side but then righted itself quickly and literally walked over to our glass door and looked up at me. As if to say, “help, here I am on the deck again.” So fierce its little face!
Margy was here by now, and we knew a grocery delivery would be coming soon to the back porch, so there was that pressure. So finally I went out on the deck with a shoebox, thinking to put it in that for safety, but it quickly walked away along the wall and jumped off the deck (about 2 1/2 feet down maybe) and was in a little side corner near the steps with no way out. I thought I’d try to get it to jump in the box–but by now it was acting more lively. When my hand came over its head, though, it opened its beak as if I might feed it. I was able to shoo it toward the open box, but once in the box it did not like that at all, so I quickly brought it over to the other side of the porch steps and set it onto a patch of ground cover plants. Then it decided to walk under the deck, out of my sight.
The whole morning I was never sure what to do, to leave everything alone, or to help, and in what way. I don’t know why the parents kept calling to the chick. It reminded me of when they were trying to get their previous set of chicks to fledge, but this one was obviously too young to fly. I wondered if whatever trauma had happened the night before, that left two chicks dead, and one missing, might have freaked them out so they wanted to get their chick away from that nest. Or maybe they were giving protective warnings to whatever might have disturbed the nest before. (For example, the chipmunk that frequents the area.) As a human neighbor, is my presence helpful or harmful?
The parents have come back now and are calling repeatedly, but at least one of them was down on the ground, so maybe they’ve figured out that the chick is underneath the deck. I hope so. It is too dark under there for me to see. So I may never know the fate of the chick. But I do take comfort in how fierce it was in those last moments of our interaction. It probably only needs a few more days to grow before it would be ready to fly.
The robins raise their young so quickly, just a few weeks and they are already fledging from the nest. But they treasure their little family, and take utmost care to give the babies everything they need. We feel privileged to watch from our windows. So I will take my theme from this little family, to speak about the human rights of families.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality, or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Now, in these few sentences, we can also see the foundations of the right to marriage for same-sex couples and transgender persons, because this article affirms “free and full consent”–that we choose our intended spouses, rather than being assigned a spouse by parents or society. At the time it was written in 1948, sexual orientation wasn’t fully understood or protected. But I was happy to be a part of the changes made in the last decades that extended this right to all couples.
And today, I am especially thinking about Mahmoud Khalil, being held in ICE detention in Louisiana, since March 8th. A legal green-card resident of New York, he was detained for previously speaking up about the human rights of people in Gaza. He was not permitted to be with his wife for the birth of their child, and today immigration officials have denied a request for him to hold his newborn son during a visit from his wife. This cruelty robs him and his baby of a bonding that is so humanly necessary. He should be free, and able to go home to his family.
I’ll close with a few photos from the baby robins.
We have robins nesting again in the beams of our deck! Two years ago, a pair of robins raised three broods of chicks over the course of the season. The year before that, in 2022, they had tried, but failed, and it seemed the clear ceiling raised the heat too much for the babies. So I created a shade from cloth to go over them. That worked for 2023. Last year, no nests on the deck. But this year, they were rooting around again on the beam. Imagine my chagrin when a robin starting building a nest in a different section of the beam, with no shade cloth. I could already see her with her beak open on a warm sunny day. One day when she was gone from the nest, I counted three blue eggs.
So I tried a different solution. It was a bit of a risk, but I went out with a ladder and painted the ceiling above the nest with some white primer/paint. She had flown off when I got close, but after I finished she came back, and I am happy to say has continued to sit on the nest every day. I hope this helps her babies to thrive, as I wish for all babies to thrive. I am thinking of the babies in Gaza who are being starved right now.
Another joy is that there is also a robin nesting in the bush near our front door. You can just barely see her from our living room windows–she is so well camouflaged from above. But she too is still sitting.
Spring is bursting all over. The cherry trees have some blossoms and the peach tree is starting too. I just hope all this rain we are getting this week doesn’t prevent them from being pollinated. The rain is much needed because of drought, but I miss the sunny days we had last week. I did a holistic spray for the trees the week before. Our trees struggled last year so I am trying to be more attentive this season.
Being in the garden is so healing in light of all the devastating news each day from our country, and from the world. One more photo of beauty, daffodils Margy picked from the garden. May the beauty be a prayer for peace.
The last robin chick in the nest. The others have left in the night.
Today all the robin babies fledged from the nest. When I woke, there was just this one left. Its parent came by to check on it, not bringing food, but flying up to the nest and then back down, as if to say, here is what you do now.
Shortly after, I saw it take its first flight, flopping over to the screen window of our house, where it tried to grab hold but then fell down to a soft patch of lemon balm below the window. (Now I am wondering about a sound I heard last night, of something bouncing on the screens in my room. Might that have been earlier chicks making their first flights?) A bit later, I went down to the patio, and something flew by from a perch on the chairs, then to the grass on the other side of the orchard. All the while the parent robins were chirping loudly and continuously, whether to warn me away, or to reassure the chick, I don’t know.
I was wondering what would happen next for the fledglings, and learned via research that the parents will keep feeding and teaching them for the next few weeks, while they hide on the ground or in bushes, trying to avoid predators and learning to find their own food. I am so glad that there are no more neighborhood cats roaming in our yard. The mother might start another brood soon, but the father will keep watching out for these fledglings during this time. All the chicks will stay in this territory for about 4 months or so.
I wandered around the orchard and the yard trying to see what I could see, while the parents chirped at me, and I spotted this chick on the pallets that form our yard waste bins, with a parent nearby perched on the same bin.
Finally, I was heading back to the house and suddenly saw another chick perched quietly in the hazelnut bush.
I had to go inside then to eat my own breakfast, and download the photos. As I have been writing this, outside on the patio, I’ve seen the parent robins go into that bush with food, so it must still be there–it is a great hiding spot. I am torn by competing desires: to observe and photograph the young ones, or to just go inside and ease the parents alarm. They should know by now that I won’t hurt their babies. Actually, they don’t seem to mind me when I am sitting at the patio table, not walking about.
In the meantime, I am glad we have lots of tall plants and bushes and trees that make good spaces for the next phase of their young lives. It all happens so quickly–less than four weeks from the eggs in the nest to the small birds out and about. I wish them all the best!
Finding Our Way Home 