Watch The Birdie

I wrote about the robin that has been building a nest amongst our gardening clutter in my previous post, when it had begun exhibiting what might have been display behaviour to attract a mate. Although we'd seen other (male) robins passing through the garden (the females and males can be told apart in the breeding season because the former are much plumper) there was none of the "courtship feeding" of the female by the male that one expected.

Then on Friday 14 March the bird was sitting in the nest, its little eyes and a splash of red just visible amongst the brown-on-brown of the plumage and dead leaves. A check later, when it had temporarily vacated the nest, showed that it contained two little eggs. (However, they were impossible to photograph, since the depth of the nest and the shelves' vertical separation meant they couldn't be seen without first poking in a mirror.) The bird was absent altogether on Saturday; but was back in the garden on Sunday, with an attendant male. They were (as ground-feeding birds are) very interested in the soil that Judith was turning over; the male duly found a small earthworm, stunned it against the side of a pot, and fed it to the female. Courtship feeding!

On Monday morning, there were four eggs in the nest. Since Monday morning, the female has been sitting there full-time, so there may be more: we won't know until the chicks start hatching around a fortnight from now. We have seen the flash of the male, coming and going with food; where he stays overnight is unknown. (It's certainly not with our female.) I took the following photograph this morning, standing on a chair inside the open side door using the camera's telephoto function; it was very difficult to bring the bird into proper focus (that brown-on-brown of plumage and dead leaves), but I'll keep a watch and try again at a suitable future juncture. (If only I'd thought to remove that white-capped bottle in the foreground while the bird was still building its nest, eh?)