Backyard Birdwatch: Tag--You're It!

Time: 8:00-8:20 a.m.

Weather Report: Cloudy, 72°F, 87% Humidity, Winds: WSW @ 7 mph; feels like 72°F.

Location: The backyard of my home in the upstate New York City of Rochester. (See map at the bottom of the left column for spacial reference.)

Bird Species/Markings/Features:--1 female American Robin (AR)and 2 fledgings.

Sights/Sounds/Activities: The norm: air conditioner 'whitenoise,' non-descript (to my ears) aviary chatter and song.

Notes: While putting away the clean dishes from the dishwasher this morning, I looked out the windo and noticed the AR1 pecking around in the groundcover which barely passes as a lawn in my backyard. I grabbed my digital camera and went out to see what she was up to.

After I went out into the backyard, I quietly moved towards AR1, and she looked at me once and continued digging away looking for food, perhaps for her fledgings. I took another step towards her, and she hopped toward the lilac bush in the back right coner of the yard. AR1 appeared to have part of a worm in her beak.



I then moved into the garden bed from behind the lilac, and AR1 hopped onto the tarp-covered woodpile beside the compost pit, behind the shed. From that vantage point she continued to look around, as if awaiting my next move.



Picking up my pace slightly, I moved in front of the shed and AR1 popped up from the wood pile to the top corner of the shed roof. She then flitted along the roof line to the other end of the roof, still holding a piece of worm in her beak.



AR1 flew about three feet from the shed roof to a low lying power wire which ran prependicular to the roof. The worm is visible in AR1's beak the shadowy picture below.



Last stop--the nest. From the wire, AR1 took an arching turn toward the house and onto the gutter joint directly besdie her nest. Inside the nest I could again see (using binoculars) the two fledgings craning their necks for some vittles.



This observation took about ten minutes and the overall course of AR1s movement was almost a complete circle around our backyard, from nest to back-most part of yard to shed to wire and back to nest. I continued to be entranced by some of the little idiosyncratic behvaiors of this mother American Robin...