She's Baaaccckkkk!!

Upon entering my front door yesterday, I looked down and saw this mess on my front steps....

I then looked up & this is what I saw.... she's BAACCCKKK!

Mother robin is back again this year. As you can see, this mother robin's house is currently quite messy, she has some house cleaning to do...yep, just like me! If you look real hard you can see that she even found some blue Easter basket grass to weave in and out of her nest! Truly amazing! The robins work on their nest in the early morning and then you don't see them much for the rest of the day. We had a nice spring shower over the weekend...made for perfect mud for nest building. The robins start with larger/coarser grasses and mud for the main structure of their nests. They use their big ruby-red breast to form the nice hollow of the nest...fun to watch this process of the nest building. Once the nest suits the parents, they will line it with finer, softer grasses. Mother robin will lay one egg a day, usually 3 - 5 eggs. The robins will then hatch, one a day...in the order they were laid!
Do you suppose it is the same robin as last year? I often wonder this...It is a great place to raise a family of birds as the the small porch protects the little ones from the elements...no rain under here!!

I did some searching through old photo files from last year and am going to share our 2008 robins nest with you...

If I went upstairs and opened the window & hung my body out the window I could get a pretty good view of the baby birds.

Four tiny robins just hatched....Feeding time....

The babies would pop their little heads up each time we went in or out of our door. They become sensitive to noise/motion and think it is mother landing on the nest with a big juicy earthworm....

Here are a few more pictures that I snapped last spring.....

The red bud tree & crab apple trees in full bloom...my favorite time of the year! These trees always put on quite a show in our yard, usually just in time for Mother's Day weekend.

A shot of the trees outside our bedroom window....

The orioles arrive here in the springtime just as the red bud & crab apple trees are blooming. They enjoy the sweet nectar in the blossoms. They also LOVE oranges & grape jam. I load up my oriole feeders and we welcome these springtime visitors to our yard. One of the most beautiful birds...the Baltimore Oriole.

Male & female Baltimore Oriole enjoying oranges & jam for a morning snack.

Ending with a few more pictures from last years garden....

I love this picture! I didn't notice the delicate spider web on the tomato plant until I downloaded the picture onto my computer (click photo for better viewing). Isn't that just cool! We enjoyed these sweet tomatoes in our garden salads...the plants were simply planted in a clay pot and put in sunny spots throughout my backyard.

I had some fun making photo collages....

Looking forward to robin eggs, blooming red buds & crab apples, and the return of the oriole,

brenda