Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Home: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
The robins have been here for at least a couple of weeks, but now I’m hearing them at least once a day.
I put 200 mealworms (dried) out for them to eat on Sunday afternoon. They were still untouched this morning. Need a more visible spot.
North American robins are big birds, compared to the cheery English robin red-breast of Christmas card fame. Our robins are a kind of thrush, with grey backs and orange-y breasts. The male is brighter than the female.
Baby robins have spotted breasts and look clumsy, which they are, but only briefly. Soon they leave the nest and learn to fly.
Robins are one of the most common birds we have. We tend to use them as one of the standard birds for describing the size of other birds. Bigger than a robin? That’s fairly big, for a city bird. Something like a gull or a crow. Smaller than a robin? That would be in the chick-a-dee or sparrow range.
Robins build round nests, using a lot of mud and straw and twigs. Two nests glued together could make a sphere.
Because they are reasonably unafraid of people, robins will build their nests close to houses. We had one in our Virginia creeper a couple of years ago, and everyone had to walk right by it (within inches) to get into the house. That particular nest was a little fancier than most because the birds had found some coloured yarn and worked it in.
Some people leave long bits of yarn lying around for birds to use in nesting, but this one was by luck, not design.
The eggs are a special shade of turquoise (robin’s egg blue). The babies are born with that prehistoric naked dinosaur look, but soon they grow feathers and put on weight.
If you hold your hand over the robin’s nest when the babies are in there (when the mother is away looking for worms and bugs to feed them), the babies, even though their eyes may be closed, will turn their heads up to the shadow you’re casting. They open their mouths wider than the size of their heads, and wait for dinner to drop in.
The year we had that nest in the Virginia creeper, I had the door open to get a breeze through the house one summer day. Later, after I’d been working up in my office for a while, I went downstairs to the ground level and there was a robin in the living room.
He was one of the babies, and the Mum was outside calling him, but he couldn’t figure out that he had to return the way he’d come.
I tried to shoo him out, but it was too complicated for him to follow my directions. Picking him up wasn’t my first choice, but that’s what I had to do. I guess robins are tough enough to survive a little handling, but the poor little guy’s heart was racing.
He joined his Mum, who scolded him, and then they flew away.
jill