The Robins

The robins started trying to build nests in the empty space above the porch girder about a week ago. Everyday Elisabeth or I will sweep away the previous days collection of twigs, string, bits of paper or tin foil, interwoven leaves of grass. It falls down to the driveway below or onto the deck of the porch. It is one thing to push a small pile of twigs, it is another to push what is obviously a nearly completed nest off into oblivion. It is upsetting but necessary, as the completed nest will fill with eggs. When the eggs hatch they will grow and the mother come and go feeding them and in the process she will shit all over the deck. The chicks will make a mess. They will call out to the mother and talk to each other incessantly. I am sure the cat will find a way to get to them and if not he will probably kill himself, falling off the deck trying.

The robins are so swift in their construction. And persistent. If we miss a day of ‘pushing off the construction material’ we are likely to have to push an almost-completed-nest off the three and a half inch shelf of the girder. When the nest is near completion and must be demolished it makes me think of a near-term abortion. The nest comes down intact (the robins are master constructors and their product is solid) and lays ten feet below along with the other bits of straw and material like a fetus in the afterbirth. One can be sure the mother bird is somewhere very close by, perhaps watching with a bit of grass in its beak.

When we were first together, Elisabeth and I, we moved to Florida and lived in a rented garden apartment in Cutler Ridge. When a pigeon set up housekeeping on the balcony outside our patio door we gave it no thought. Pigeons are not clean animals- at least not as clean as the robins nests described above. Their nests are messy affairs of mud and thick-bladed Florida grass-but we didn't care, at first, and watched the process of the building. Soon it became populated with two eggs and we were entertained with the birthing drama. When they hatched the mother came and fed the pink, featherless, mice like beings and they began to move around in the nest. As time past, the mother bird's excrement mortar’d solid the fluff that grew and was shed by the chicks. Bits of food and, eventually, the chick’s poop larded onto and around the nest as well. Though still fascinated by the process we became less amused with the mess and jokingly named the chicks “Ugly” and “Dirty”.

If I had known how long and putrid was the process of raising pigeon chicks I surely would have erased the nest before they were laid. But we were ignorant and, as I said, fascinated with the process and could not bring ourselves to destroy the family established on the sunny balcony. I don’t remember how the pigeon family story finally ended, whether they flew away or what. On that my memory is vague but I swore to myself I would never let another bird build a nest so close to me again. That is why we are so diligent in keeping the robin’s nests from taking hold.