Strawberries and Robins and the Bertrand Debaucle

The strawberry patch that for the last six years has served only Robins (which may be why I have a Robin Settlement, one nest per rafter, under my deck above the garage) somehow this year is not rife with half-eaten berries.

The Robin has mysteriously left them to me.

She raised her young here, so you would think there would be no strawberries for me at all. It may be due to the one day a nearly-grown, but still with belly fuzz (adult feathers growing in), robin sat on the rafter with his beak pointed straight up. All day. Seriously, every time I passed by, his head was thrown back, beak up. Waiting for Mother and the Worm.

I became troubled because I was outside all day and never once did I see the Mother Robin, who I know by name (which is to say, "Robin") because I have often passed under her nest, and we came to the point where she did Not fly off the nest unless I opened the side door of the garden closet. Then she would lunge, hoping to Alarm me by the wind of her wings in my hair. Hoping to teach me a Lesson about not opening the side door of the garden closet when she is incubating her Eggs.

But that day there was no Mother Robin with her wind in my hair, just Bertrand, the young fledgling (if he was that yet). I knew him from the days when his spikey hatchling head peeked over the edge of the nest and looked at me without fear. Or was that without interest. I did not, after all, have a worm for him or a proper beak to stuff it into his own. There he waited and waited for Mother Robin, and unless she was being very stealth about it, sneaking in and out whenever I was around the corner, she was gone.

I know it is none of my business. Now that no Robins have been eating my strawberries. At the time it seemed like a good idea. I was digging in my garden finding SO many worms that Bertrand would consider delicious, and what if Harm had befallen Mother Robin and Bertrand would cut off all of the circulation to his bird brain by keeping his head thrown back for another 12 hours and fall off the beam to his peril?

I knew better than to give him a human-scented worm. I used garden gloves and I masterminded how to convey a squirmy worm onto the beam beside Bertrand with a Hoe Handle. This is where all of the nonsense began.

Bertrand stood next to his nest with his head back and beak pointing toward heaven, still. Or, toward the floor of the deck, in fact just an inch or so from it. I don't know how Mother Robin was going to stuff a worm in anyway with no clearance above the youngster's beak. Bertrand had grown so tall. He did not fear me or even notice me as I approached with a fat worm on the end of a hoe handle. He had been hearing my voice his whole life now, I decided. My calming words to Mother Robin as I would approach so I didn't startle her (or she me), as well as our own exchanges when he peeked above the edge of the well-woven nest and once when I took a photo of him.

Had the worm complied and fallen off the hoe handle properly, everything would have been fine. No harm done (except perhaps to Worm). But no.

Worm kept crawling and recrawling around the end of the hoe and would not fall. Perhaps he sensed he was at a high altitude. Maybe worms know those things. That he was not to drop an inch into soft brown earth but onto hard brown wood to be eaten up by Young Bertrand. Perhaps his worm instincts told him to squirm away from the Smell of a Worm-Eater. These are the secrets between God and worms, which only they know. All I know is that the worm did not comply and my trying to lap the worm off the handle and onto the beam involved too many movements and I somehow changed in Bertrand's mind from friend (or harmless large creature) to foe.

Just like his forebear, Bertrand sprung from the nest and sent the wind of his wings through the top puffs of my hair that humidity had risen above its natural level. (Frizz, I am saying.) Unfortunately Bertrand did not know Where to fly. For all I know it is the first time he flew. And instead of flying Out into the world, he flew In to the garage. He flew directly in one swoop from nest to the dog crate stacked with extra shingles and a spark plug wrench and awl (with which to turn the spark plug wrench). As though it was his back-up plan. In case of emergencies, fly to the shingle with the shiny metal wrench. There he sat for an extremely long time regardless of my comings and goings into the garage. I saw Mother Robin then, flying toward the nest, then swooping away. Then in a tree watching me, watching the nest where Bertrand no longer waited.

He is in the garage, I wished I could explain. I had made a terrible mess of things. She didn't know where he was. He didn't know where to go.

This was my fault and soon it would be dusk and I would want to close the garage door and Bertrand was still waiting to grow up. Waiting for further instructions. Waiting for worms. And Waiting for his chest feathers to grow in.

He was no longer expecting a worm, his beak pointed only forward now, just looking straight ahead, like a child taught to Say Nothing until Mother Arrives.

I was filled with regret for throwing the balance of nature askance. I had to urge Bertrand out. I brought the dreaded hoe handle close to the crate and he did not flinch. Oh really, I thought, you must have some instinctual fear of my kind. I inched it nearer to him and Then he flew. He sailed out of the garage, under his long-time home on the beam, out above the driveway and into the real world across the yard and on to parts unknown. Mother Robin was gone by then, to my knowledge. Or maybe they met up, mid air. Maybe they decided to build another nest elsewhere because of my worm-on-hoe-handle shenanigans.

Strawberries the robins left for me this year (plus blackcaps)

I have seen Robins in the yard, but I don't know if it is Mother Robin or if it is Bertrand, fully feathered in his belly, now, or other stranger Robins who have come simply for the Worms. I have a lot of worms and my lawn is pure nature, no chemicals to make robins walk funny or lay square eggs. So I think robins will stay, but no one has come back to the nest.

Let it be known that once a worm is dangled from a hoe handle, the robins suspect trickery and may make their home elsewhere.

Sigh. I should not have messed with nature. Though I do seem to have all of the strawberries in the patch to myself this year, in spite of other robins in the yard... Maybe Mother Robin was a particular berry fiend and the other Robins eat in moderation. Secrets, again, that only God and Robins know.