Kate Barrow called me the other day to leave the message that they had a beautiful little robin’s nest in their front yard with three eggs in it – and she thought I might enjoy snapping a few pictures of it. And she was right! So I stopped by their one morning this past week, before heading down to WGTD- and found the nest in the light fixture right beside their front door. . . with three beautiful robin’s eggs in it. Took a couple of pictures and was on my way – only to find out later that this wasn’t even the nest she was talking about. She was referring to another nest which was in a small decorate shrub right by their garage door – and what was fun about it was that it was much lower than the one in the light fixture, and you could look easily right down into the nest (assuming that the mother wasn’t there.)
So this morning, on my way to Holy Communion to play for a funeral, I stopped by Barrows again to see if I could find this other bird’s nest- and sure enough, all I had to do was get within three feet of that shrub before suddenly a bird flew out of it- and I knew that this was exactly the spot where the nest must be. So I grabbed my camera, held it over the spot and snapped several pictures as quickly as I could / without even looking through the view finder … so I could be on my way and the mother robin would feel free to return to her motherly post. Only when I was back in my car and on my way to church did I stop to peek at the photos I’d taken . . . only to realize that I’d caught the eggs in mid- hatching! I called Kate right away, who told me that she had looked at the nest just last night, with flashlight, and the three eggs were there and all intact. . .
I keep looking at those two baby birds – the one apparently just out of its shell – and marvel at how completely helpless they are and utterly dependent on their mother for nourishment and protection. And I look at the nest itself and what a feat of incredible engineering it is. And I look at that unhatched egg and its beautiful color – and I think to myself, “What a Wonderful World.”