Robin’s Egg Blue

Some may accuse the robin of poor planning when she began building her nest right next to my window.

Sure, several times a half completed nest fell to the ground. Certainly, she would have to start from scratch with each fall. And, of course, now she is occasionally scared off and her eggs left helplessly at the mercy of some strange large form shifting on the other side of the window. But I’ll just thank the robin for kindly allowing me a front row seat to watch a new chapter in her life.

Yes, there is a robin’s nest right outside of our window! It turns out, robins are the harbingers of spring. They are some of the earliest birds to start laying eggs and are quite successful at it.

We read up on the robin reproductive process with an eagerness that we can only equate to what others must experience when anticipating their own child. Granted, a pregnant person is unlikely to be wondering how many eggs she will lay before settling on them to begin incubating them. The robin lays one egg a day. By not spending much time on top of her eggs, she delays their development until she lays all her eggs (usually four). Once all the eggs are laid, she begins sitting on the nest throughout the day.

We knew there would be a new egg each day, but that did not decrease our excitement with each new addition to the nest. The few times we could get close to her were occasions when she was in the process of laying and could not take wing as soon as we were visible through the window.

Now that there are four eggs in the nest, it’s incubating time. In two weeks, we should be enjoying the spectacle of watching the chicks hatch. That will make my season.