The Circle of Life

Mr. and Mrs. Robin hatched a pair of babies right outside my daughter's front door. She took photographs of them every single day, starting the day they second one hatched. Here are a few of them.











Here is Mrs. Robin making an umbrella of her body to protect her babies from driving rain. That's the road, not a lake, in the background.)




And this is part of the e-mail I received from my daughter just now:

Today, tragedy struck. Jeff had just looked out the window and saw a big commotion around the nest and he yelled, "Oh no!" Sydney and I ran to the front door and Jeff said he had just seen a big black crow swoop down and take the babies right out of their nest. He could see the crow flying off with the babies in its beak and one of the parent birds chasing the crow frantically. We were all just devastated. Sydney cried. I cried. The poor mother bird came back and sat on her empty nest briefly. Soooo sad!

I read that robins can have 2-3 nests per season, so I am hoping desperately that they will reuse the same nest and I will figure out a way to protect the babies!!

As she says, sometimes the Circle of Life just plain stinks!