This is my first posting from Colorado. Leaving the desert of Arizona for the Rocky
Mountains and green spaces provides a new perspective, and hopefully new musing
and photography opportunities.
But the initial experience was with a mama robin
bird. During my first morning coffee on the covered porch of the new house, a
robin flew away from under the ceiling, just before sunrise. I looked up and
saw a large nest in the corner, well protected from the high winds and
predators.
So, we were expecting the eggs to hatch.
After a week of tireless trips to the nest and
gauging if we were a threat to her eggs, mama bird decided that even my large
Akita would be unable to reach the eggs she was keeping warm. And the week
after that she started coming back with worms in her mouth to the faint
chirping sounds in her nest.
The eggs had hatched.
Two days ago the first chick took its first leap
out, onto the porch railing. Soon after two others joined and gave us the
delightful experience of seeing how healthy, fluffy and unafraid of humans they
were. So, we minimized our stays on the porch and let them discover life at
their own pace.
This morning all three of them took their first
flight to the tree 5 meters away from the porch. They stayed together on the
same branch while mama kept bringing worms to them.
In a day or two, they will fly away, and mama will
finally take a rest, perhaps perch behind me to snack on worms, have a cold
drink, and watch the Football World Cup games with me!
… And I thought about Robert Frost’s poem “The Exposed
Nest” (circa 1916). Frost recounts his stumbling upon a bird’s nest that had
fallen to the ground filled with vulnerable fledglings in it. He and a young
boy build a cover to protect the young chicks, but he wondered if mama bird
would abandon the nest because of their interference.
About the harm their empathy could provoke he wrote:
“Dared
not spare to do the best we could
Though
harm could come from it”
… The moral dilemma was not as pronounced for us
regarding the robin nest under our porch cover. Mama and the fledglings were
never in danger, yet we decided to protect them from our own interference into
their routine and space. And, seeing the young birds take their first leap,
feel comfortable with us (and the dog) made us feel part of nature’s
flexibility. Its acceptance of compassion, even when it was a gamble.
In a couple of days the fluffy feathers will get
more rigid, the wings will trust stronger muscles, and the young birds will hunt
for their own worms.
Mama robin will recall her now empty nest once
filled with the welcoming chirps of hungry chicks. And she will be proud of
having done what any single mother hopes to do: be there around the clock,
forget all the pain of sunrise to sunset back-and-forths to protect and feed
her chicks, and the celebration of three healthy chicks who took their first leap
to our porch railing, then their first flight to the tree nearby.
Robert Frost ends his poem reflecting on survival. He
realises that human empathy cannot always change the natural order of things.
That their makeshift cover for the nest may not have provided support for the
survival of the chicks, but perhaps had left them alone in the field. And he
does not want to witness the result. He writes:
“We changed the place from bad to worse
Or
maybe better-a wish-it-were-better”
So, he and the boy leave hoping, but uncertain, that they did the right thing:
“We
left the place without a look behind”
PS/ I took a photo of the nest when mama was away. And
two weeks later photos of the chicks on the tree branch. This capture shows how
they still stay way as they were in the nest. But each chick seems to have its
own identity – one of them keeps flying around and sitting on the other two. Is
he/she the dominant, future alpha robin?
June 25, 2026
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026
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