Robin Redbreast

robin_for_webThis happy fellow has been sitting outside our kitchen window for several days now (not continuously, but regularly). He's got a nice shape to his head. There's a nest that's big enough around the other side of the house perched on an eve to be a robin's nest.We've spotted some robin's-egg-blue egg fragments and have wondered -- did the eggs get snatched (the nest is in a hard-to-reach place)? Is it still incubation time and those eggshells are unrelated? A bird information site noted that female robins immediately clean the nest of shell fragments after hatchlings are fledged and gone. So perhaps she already had one brood. They can have up to three broods a year, apparently, with each clutch of 4 to 6 eggs representing 90 percent of the female's weight! With this fellow sitting sentinel and watching me with his steely gaze--not moving as I get close enough to snap photos or even stand on a porch a few feet away from him--I'm guessing that the robinlings are still to come and that his mate hasn't left her post yet. Oddly, the robins seem to have perched directly above what we call the "cat highway" that runs along an alley on the uphill side of our house. All the neighborhood cats seem to have agreed to use that path to move among territories. Our front porch is some kind of neutral territory, too (scat!). We'll be fooling the cats soon: a new fence and a closed gate may require the redistricting of our zone.