The parents were off of the nest, so I stepped onto the porch to take a photograph.

The father arrived.

He took one look at me, raised the feathers on his head (look at that impressive display) and chastised me for being near his brood.

I left.

Their eyes open.

The nest is getting full. I’ve read that the babies will toss out the smallest chick. We’ll see if that happens.

Are you going camping this summer? Bring your dog. And your chicken!

What an astounding transformation in just a day! The robins are no longer naked babies, nor are they small. They fill the nest, the down has changed color to grey and there are pinfeathers coming in on their wings.

While the parents were off finding food, I was able to take this photo.

One look at these animals leaves no doubt that not all dinosaurs died out. Some evolved into birds.

Baby robins are such odd little creatures! Here they are on the fourth day after the first one hatched. They are still mostly bald, with large, out-or-proportion heads that they can barely lift, but look at how they’ve grown to fill up the nest.

American Robins, day four

Here is a view of where the nest is hidden in my window box. You can see why the robins thought that it would be a good place. The roof gives it some shelter from the elements, and the nest is inaccessible to predators.

They rightly determined that Lily was not a threat. Lily spends much of her day up there, but she ignores the robin parents that fly back and forth with insects, and they ignore her. The robins, however, don’t ignore me. If I go out there I am glared at, and then the parents fly off, and so I have ceded the space to the birds and the dog.