I’ve been feeding E. rice cereal once a day since Sunday and yesterday I could tell that the light went on in his head. He started opening his mouth and leaning forward as soon as he was finished swallowing the last bite. N. said he looked like a baby bird. It was pretty cute. A couple of times he even grabbed my arm to guide the spoon I was holding into his mouth.
In other news, it looks like Robin Watch ’08 has ended sadly. Last week there was a horrible windstorm and the willow tree was shaken like crazy. Afterwards I didn’t see the female robin sitting on the nest for days. I went outside and checked and two eggs had fallen out of the nest and smashed on the ground. I took a peek inside the nest and there was one egg left, but since the robin hadn’t been sitting on it for days there wasn’t any way it would hatch.
I read online that robins lay about 3 clutches of eggs a season, so the pair probably decided to cut their loses after losing the eggs in the storm and decided to build a new nest somewhere else and try again.
Oh, that makes me so sad. I felt a special affinty for your mama bird. I hope she made a happy nest out of the wind somewhere. All sadness aside, that’s a really great picture of the egg.