During the weekend that we moved into our new house, a robin made a nest in our unfinished garage. We thought about getting rid of the nest and then decided against is as we didn't know when the garage would be completed. Cullen took a peek into the nest at one point and saw that there were 4 eggs. We tried not to disturb "Mama Robin" when she was on her nest, but would poke our heads in to say "Hi" and so that Kinley could learn a bit about birds and nesting.

Skip forward to Friday, June 17th and the concrete floor was poured in the garage. Much to my happiness, "Mama Robin" remained with her nest. On Monday the 20th the workers came to insulate and poly the garage while we were at work. When I got home and saw the work that had been done, I panicked because I wondered what had happened to the nest. Lo and behold (and compliments to the workers) they had taken the nest down and put it on the ground in front of the garage. To my even bigger surprise, there were 4 baby robins in the nest!

We spent that evening moving the nest about 10 feet every hour (we never touched it, just used a shovel to move it) so that the parents could find the babies. Finally we put the nest on a plastic patio table and put it under our deck so that it would be out of the elements and hopefully hidden to any predators. Over the course of the week the parents cared for the babies and they grew and grew. Natural selection occurred when one of the babies was kicked out of the nest and died (it looked small and sickly and not near the size of the others). We checked on the baby robins a couple of times each day and Kinley would talk to them and watch "Mama Robin" and "Papa Robin" as they gathered worms for their brood.

We went to the lake this past Saturday, and I had said that it wouldn't surprise me if the babies were gone by the time we got back. We talked about it with Kinley so that she wouldn't be upset when it came time for the babies to go. When we got back from the lake yesterday evening the nest was empty. Kinley was very excited that the babies had gone flying with their mommy and daddy.

I just love nature!!!