Silly bird

Eugene called me on his cell phone Tuesday right after he left for lunch. He was laughing, and he said that I had to go outside and look at something on the fire stairs on the back of the building--he said a bird had built a nest on the stairs and was sitting on an egg.

So I went out the back door to look. Dave was rushing out that way to go down and get something out of his car; I made him slow down so I could look before he crashed down there and scared the bird away. Sure enough, right at the top of the first flight of stairs, there was a robin sitting in a nest.

(These are terrible pictures, I know--I had to lighten them up a lot in order to see anything at all; I didn't want to get too close to her and scare her away.)

I took these pictures yesterday morning--I brought the camera in with me specifically to see if I could get any pictures of the silly bird. Eugene said that he had seen the nest earlier, but the bird hadn't been in it, and he thought someone had just found the nest and stuck it there. Then, later, he'd seen a blue egg in the nest when she had been away. The guys downstairs were coming in at the same time I was, and they said this is at least her second egg--there had been one in it earlier that had disappeared, and now there was a new one.

Poor bird. You just have to laugh--Bob said there's a reason they're called "bird brains" -- but I do pity the sily thing. She jumps off and flies away every time someone comes down the stairs. I know they don't have to sit on an egg 24 hours a day, but it's hard to imagine that an egg or baby bird would survive this situation. I'll be keeping an eye on it.