life with robins

One of our robins.

Seth's photo of the nest

The pretty blue eggs.

Yesterday, Seth and I watched a robin hopping around on the ground at the base of cedar shrub. He immediately discussed the possibility of there being a nest in the shrub.  I assured him that the robin would not pick such a small little shrub to build her nest and lay her eggs.  Later that afternoon he came running inside, excitedly announcing that there WAS a nest with four blue eggs in it!  I eagerly handed him the camera, showed him the best setting and how to zoom-in and he was off.  I intended to go out later to see for myself but admired his photos from the camera in the meantime.

Today looking out the window, I watched a crow pace around the cedar shrub and then take a leap into the shrub. I had already checked on the nest earlier this morning and found all the eggs missing with a few fragments of shell on the ground. So I can only presume that a crow, perhaps even that one, was the culprit. The nest is not very high off the ground and it is in a high traffic area both for pets and humans, so I'm not the least bit surprised.  But it is disheartening as we were looking forward to watching some baby birds hatch and grow up.  Robins do usually lay more than one batch of eggs per spring so I'm holding out hope that we may find more eggs there one day soon.