May 12, 2009 - 04:30 AM
By Margaret Carney
Our baby robins started hatching on Saturday. At least, judging by the mother robin's behaviour, I think they did. We can't see into the nest, built high up in a corner of our porch, atop a narrow ledge.
Instead of coming back from feeding trips and settling right down in the grass-and-mud cup she constructed two weeks ago, she perched on the edge and peered down into the hollow. On one trip back, she was carrying something an inch long in her bill.
"A worm!" I declared to my husband. But it wasn't wriggling. Whatever it was, she placed it gently, carefully, into the hollow, then settled back on top, not quite as deep in the nest as before.
On her next several trips, I couldn't see anything in her beak, but she did seem to be delivering regular tiny morsels.
Likely cutworms from our garden, my husband said. The larval stage of moths, cutworms come out of the soil by night to munch on the baby broccoli plants we put in before the last rain. Easy pickings for a robin pair, at dawn and dusk. We're counting on our resident robins to protect our garden from these pests, in exchange for dry, safe, hassle-free housing.
The rest of the day, mom is likely carrying beetles, millipedes, ants, sowbugs, wireworms, flies, spiders, snails -- any animal matter she can find to feed her young. The size of a baby bird's mouth and throat must dictate what can be shoved into it, but their early diet is chock-full of protein.
As of today, we still don't hear any cheeping from the nest and the male robin hasn't delivered any food. But in the next week, that should change. After the next rain, both parents will likely be pulling earthworms from the ground to feed the hungry kids.
Dad will be doing most of the feeding of fledglings as soon as they leave the nest, while the mother robin starts a second brood.
As soon as the first fruits of summer start to ripen, robin families will be there, gobbling them down, for they're every bit as much vegetarians the rest of the year as they are carnivores in spring.
Elderberries, honeysuckle and serviceberries are the first to ripen. Chokecherries, pincherries, mulberries, raspberries and dogwood are other favourites. Robins eat wild grapes, blueberries, sumac, crabapples, woodbine and blackberries.
Where wild apples, buckthorn, multiflora rose and mountain ash berries hang on in creek valleys through fall, some robins will overwinter, instead of migrating south to Georgia and Florida. That's why you might see a flock of robins in Durham come February or March, as they clean up the local harvest and start moving around, looking for more fruit.
Nature queries: 905-725-2116 or
mcarney@interlinks.net.
Durham resident Margaret Carney, in addition to writing nature-appreciation columns, has also published several children's books.
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