Motherly Instinct

So I have rescued 2 baby Robins from work and I am hand raising them until they are ready to be set back into the wild. I got them Sunday May 24th and they are more work than I thought they would be. They need to eat every 30 minutes and if needed they can go for 2-3 hours once a day. I am feeding them worms and a berry mixture (which consists of blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and 12 grain whole wheat bread crumbs). They were about 1 week old when I got them and they are growing fast.

I've nicknamed one "Greedy SOB (Son of a Bird) because it's more aggressive over the food and always seems to never stop eating. The other I just nicknamed today "One Eye Willie" because I found a drop of mud on one of it's eye/eyelid and I tried to carefully clean it off. This was probably from a piece of mud falling off a worm during feeding. It will sometimes open it's eye, but most of the time it's closed. I'm sure it's eye will be fine in a couple days.

Other than that the babies are 11 days old today and I am looking forward to their "fledgling" stage... when they will get out of the nest and begin to fly short distances and learn how to take a bath, hunt, and exercise their wings. However it will be interesting and fun for me (a human) to teach them their independence as a bird.

Since I've had "my babies" I've noticed an increase of my own motherly instincts kick in. My attention gets drawn to the slightest noise that resembles their chirp and even when I know they are safe I cannot seem to focus clearly on the thing I was previously focused on until I go check on them. And I am attached (obviously since I'm calling them "my babies"). Even when I left them with my grandma for 45 minutes just to pick up some things at Wal-Mart, I found myself getting excited to see the birds as I pulled into her driveway. Also, in between feedings I'll find myself staring at the birds and seeing how much they have grown and how little they still are, then I realize that it's time for me to feed them again. :-)

I do believe that God is preparing me for the day when I will have my own family. And I can happily say that I think I am just about ready. And by "just about" I mean that I'm just lacking the Wonderful Godly Man that I will one day call My Husband. But as every day goes by I feel closer and closer to meeting him and knowing that he is "the one".

But anyways that day will come... back to the robins.

About the mother of the baby robins I am raising: I've had to take the baby robins to work a few times because of the busy feeding schedule and I thought maybe the mom would hear her babies chirping, but I never spotted her. So I am assuming she is busy taking care of another nest of baby robins.

Stay tuned to see a couple videos of the baby robins before I let them go back into the wild. :-)


The day I got them



4 days later (today)
Greedy on the right and Willie on the left