hatched!

June 24, 2011

hatched!

a couple of months ago, i stumbled across these four tiny, perfectly turquoise eggs.

not long after i posted those pictures, the eggs vanished... i couldn't for the life of me figure out what had happened to them. had they hatched already? did the mama robin move the eggs to a different nest?

then i did a little research online and discovered all sorts of interesting information.
for instance, the time it takes for a robin's eggs to hatch is about 2 weeks, and then it takes another 2 weeks or so of living in the nest until they're on their own. also, the mama robin does all of the nest-building herself, even choosing its location. she cannot, however, move her eggs - they're too large.

i also learned that, unfortunately, there is a type of snake called an "egg snake" - as well as egg-eating birds - that can cause eggs to vanish.

so when i noticed a new little nest being constructed in one of the river birch trees a couple of weeks later, i left it alone. i watched from our front window every day, and yes, you could say i was a bit obsessed - but i didn't want any more pictures of eggs.

a few weeks passed, and then one day, i saw the robin sitting next to the nest, instead of on it like she'd done the weeks before. so i asked my husband to get out the ladder - and sure enough, there they were...

i thought it would be a great idea (and fairly easy) to document their progress each day, but i underestimated mama and daddy robin. hearing the sound of bird wings beating all around my head while being at the top of a ladder was surprisingly eerie - i felt like i was tippi hedren in that hitchcock movie, minus the cute 1960s clothes.

so i settled for "from the ground" shots. this was taken about a week or so after the first picture...

this next one was taken about 2 weeks after the first shot, on my way out to an early morning portrait session - it's the last baby bird to leave the nest. i was a little irked i couldn't get more pictures, especially during feeding times, but i left for the shoot feeling happy to have this final image...

after the portrait session, i came home and picked up the kids to run some errands. i was putting corbin's shoes on when i heard this really loud chirping sound outside the back door.

i could hardly believe my eyes - the last little baby robin, which i'd photographed only a couple of hours earlier, had made it all the way out of the nest, and found its way to my back doorstep...