The remaining three robin babies are making a ruckus, and they’re so demanding of food that the window box is shaking.

They’re eager to finish growing and leave the nest.

It’s no longer a comfortable home. It’s more than just overcrowded. It’s swarming with mites.

There are several varieties of mites that infest wild bird nests. They are all blood-sucking. They need a host for their meals, and their entire lifecycle is on the birds. But, as you can see, their population can swell beyond what the birds can contain. The mites will look for new hosts, and although they prefer birds, they’ll jump to dogs and humans. They’ll invade your house, looking for a meal. It is a good thing that I’ve banned Lily from the porch.

This is why you don’t want wild bird nests in your coops. Once your flock gets mites, it’s very, very hard to eliminate them entirely. In almost  20 years of chicken keeping, I’ve never had a mite infestation, and I don’t want to start now. I’m worried that, unknowingly, I’ve already exposed my hens to these mites. From now on, the porch door remains closed. Once the last three robins leave the nest, I’ll be removing it, and the entire contents of the window box, including the dirt (and, sadly my yet to ripen tomatoes) into a plastic garbage bag and throwing it out. The dog beds are old. They’ll be discarded, too. The porch will be scrubbed. I will not allow robins to nest on my porch again. There are plenty of other places for them to live.

Nature is not always pretty.

This morning I left Lily inside while I checked on the robin’s nest on my porch.

I noticed that the robins had reoriented themselves again, butts in, beaks out.

The oldest robin looked especially uncomfortable. There’s not enough room for it’s wings to be at it’s sides.

While I was taking this photo it leaped out of the nest and half-tumbled, half-flew to the porch floor, and then leapt into the air and landed safely on the ground! Take a close look. The young robin is to the bottom, left, of the stone wall. The parent is on the wall.

Maybe I had scared the baby out of it’s nest! I ran downstairs to “save” it. It ran away from me, but I was able to scoop it up and bring it back to it’s nest. I gently put it back it, and it immediately flung itself back out, over the railing, and back to the lawn, where a parent was waiting, with food in his mouth.

I guess it was time. Meanwhile, the fledgling’s siblings are sighing with relief that they have more space in the nest.

The parents will have their work cut out for them, taking care of the fledgling, and the three remaining youngsters in the nest. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to keep Lily off of the porch!

There’s loud, demanding cheeping coming from the nest. The robin parents fly back and forth with insects in their mouths. The youngsters have oriented themselves to the direction that the adults approach and land.

It’s getting crowded. But, there’s no manure in the nest because after the parents feed their babies, they fly off with  the poo. Still, there’s little room in there. From what I’ve read, these youngsters will be ready to fledge (leave the nest) by day 12 or 14. Soon! They’ll able to fly, but will still beg for food from their parents and so it will be noisy around here awhile longer.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be keeping Lily off of the porch. Although she see ignores the robins now, a bird that drops right in front of her nose is sure to be of interest to her.

There’s now little difference between the chick that hatched first and it’s siblings. They are all large and bristling with pinfeathers.

I’ve yet to get a photograph of them with gaping mouths, demanding food. I haven’t seen them in that pose yet. Most of the time they’re sleeping.

Perhaps the parents are doing a very, very good job of feeding them. There’s certainly food in abundance. Here is a robin parent in the maple tree, with an insect in her mouth, waiting impatiently for me to leave the porch so that she can feed her babies. (Note that this bird has one dark leg and one light. Not even robins are uniform in appearance!)

The robins, though, are tolerant of Lily’s presence. How do they know that this dog thinks that they are of no consequence? She hasn’t even lifted her nose to sniff the nest. Lily says that she has better things to do than to pay attention to robins. She watches for important things, like UPS trucks and bicyclists.

The bare skin is now covered by feathers, their eyes are open, and they are hungry! I’m hearing cheeping demands for food.

The chicks remain in the spots where they hatched, and it doesn’t appear that they’ve used their legs yet.

It’s 90 degrees today and I need to water the planter. I’m bracing myself for angry chiding by the parents. Luckily for the chicks, it’s a self-watering planter, so instead of wetting the soil, I pour the water into a reservoir that is under the dirt.