Alfred Hitchcock The Birds and Rear Window - a happy ending

This morning we had a yard sale and noticed a mother robin frantically chirping. Some of our yard sale visitors explained that the mother must have lost a baby, and sure enough we found a dead baby bird that must have fallen from the nest.

Later that afternoon, irony struck as we were watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, when we heard a loud bang on our rear patio window. Oddly a Flicker hit it the day before but was only stunned and flew away after a few hours. We had recently watched The Birds and wondered about the bout of deja vu as we watched the poor mother lying lifeless on our deck. I was left puzzled as to why the mother robin would just dive bomb our rear window, when my wife called me to the front door. When I arrived, I was shocked to see a whole branch from the tree had broken off. We wondered if the branch had contained the robin’s nest that became apparent earlier this morning and quickly discovered it did.

We went to the back yard and found a cute little baby robin hopping around on the ground with the father picking up worms and feeding it. We were certain the baby would not make it with the predators roaming around, so I recovered the nest and place it in our little hydrangea tree and picked up the near fledgling and carefully placed him in the nest. We found a worm and used a yellow bag tie to mimic the father’s bright yellow beak and placed the worn near the baby. Sure enough the baby opened its mouth wide and ate the worm.

We could hear father robin frantically crying for its kidnapped baby, so we backed off and hoped he would find its new home. Not long after, he gathered a worm and flew up to the nest and fed the baby. We were delighted that the family is re-united; we just don’t have the heart to tell them what happened to momma robin.

Here is a small video of the baby robin chirping for daddy.