Mr. and Mrs. Robin continue to be exceptionally diligent parents. According to wild-bird-watching.com, baby robins need to be fed roughly every 20 minutes during daylight hours. With three hungry mouths to feed, hunting for worms has become nearly a full-time job for both parents. When Mrs. Robin isn't out hunting for worms, she spends her time sitting on the nest and keeping the babies warm. She will continue to sit on the babies for several more days, until they grow enough feathers to keep themselves warm.
On the rare occasions when Mr. and Mrs. Robin have left the nest unattended for a few minutes, we've had the opportunity to peer into the nest and get a good look at the babies. They are ridiculously cute. At this point, the babies are almost entirely bald. However, each robin has a narrow strip of feathers along its back, so it looks like they have tiny mohawks. The babies haven't opened their eyes yet, but they're already very good at holding their beaks open so that their parents can feed them worms. We've also noticed that our babies are very active -- they squirm around and wiggle their wings and legs quite a bit. It looks like they're still trying to figure out what to do with their limbs.
Now that most of our eggs have hatched, it's time to announce the winner of our "Guess the Hatch Date" contest. After carefully reviewing the Robincam footage, we determined that the first egg hatched at 6:01 AM on May 26. The winning guess was 3:20 PM on May 25 (a difference of 14 hours and 41 minutes), submitted by John from Ankeny, IA. The runner-up was Marty from Salina, KS. She guessed 11:35 AM on May 27 (a difference of 29 hours and 34 minutes). The judges have decided to award framed pictures to both the winner and the runner-up. Congratulations to John and Marty, and thanks to everyone who submitted a guess!
We are eagerly awaiting the hatching of robin #4.
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