A few of the photos we took over the course of the weeks we watched the American Robin family.
The robin pair have finished the nest.
Four robin’s egg blue eggs wait for the robin parents to begin sitting.
The new hatchlings are naked, with boggling eyes far too large for their giant heads.
After just three days the hatchlings are much bigger and their feathers are starting to grow. Their skulls and beaks begin to look more like a bird.
Like all small animals, the hatchlings spend most of their day sleeping, snoozing and napping in their protected nest.
Morning nap in the robin nest.
The fledglings have their full complement of feathers and fill all the space in the nest.
Like gangly teenagers, the robins have developed into young fledglings.
The older the chicks become, the more aware and interested they become in the world around them. It is a noisy and busy one on Fifth Avenue.
The robin fledgling waits for its parents to return with more food. It has been growing at an extraordinary rate.
This is fast food feathered style! Robin parents deliver food that they throw up into the fledgling’s mouth.
The nest in the holly bush on Fifth Avenue, NYC, is not only busy with pedestrians and traffic, but a repair crew sets up on the sidewalk for a few days.
With its sibling gone, the last remaining fledgling remains uncertain about venturing into the world.
With its parents chirping encouragingly from the branches of a tree overhead, the last fledgling begins to practice balancing on the edge of the nest.
The fledgling was very interested in the passing world and would perch on the edge of the nest and watch. It did not seem to be concerned that this made it very visible.
The juvenile robin securely balanced on the edge of its birth nest. The spotted red breast will become more distinct as it matures.
One of the last times we saw the fledgling in its nest. It explored moving from the nest to branches in the holly bush, and tried out a few ants crawling on the branches.
In the last days, the robin parents had stopped feeding the fledgling and removing the mucus sacs of poop.
We had been trying to think of the right way to describe the size of the nest. Staying a respectful distance away when it was occupied made this even more difficult. Now empty, we were able to compare it to the size of an average New York bagel (a type of bread) and it was pretty much the same size. So that;s the description you will find in the book.
