While I was gone for a few days in the Spring, a pair of Robins built a nest in the tree right next to my front door.

In fact I could see the nest from the top step of my dwelling.

Robin’s nest

I couldn’t figure out why, for a couple of days, I had some wildly angry Robins in a big maple tree right outside my house. I’d look out the window and it seemed as if they were “Robin heckling” me. And then I realized, they were pissed… I kept going right by their nest all the time. For goodness sakes, the audacity of moi.

But the location probably looked like a wonderful place for any sort of nest, if there just weren’t humans nearby. And when they built it, I guess they had not “cased the joint” very well, because humans, I guess, for a short time, were in short supply.

The Robins stuck it out for a while. After I would go inside, I’d peek out the window at the nest, and a Robin would be sitting, really, really camouflaged, on top of the eggs, blending in completely with the tree.

I was please. Perhaps the Robins and I had come to an understanding. I would not think of harming them, and they could go about their business of raising a Robin family.

But, alas, it was not so. After a day or two, the Robins gave up and abandoned the nest, and the unhatched eggs, and disappeared. But they’ve reappeared in my backyard lately, and I figure they have found a better place to build a more discrete nesting habitat.

And I think, if only they had done a little more Robin research, in deciding about their first nesting location, instead of jumping to the immediate conclusion that all was A-Ok, no humans in sight. There would be no abandoned eggs.

Or, if I only knew how to speak “Robin,” I could have assured them, that I would have most graciously welcomed them, and that I would have been more than delighted to watch a Robin family blossom right outside my abode.