My Mama bear instincts become mama bird instincts

My husband recently noticed that we have a robin living on top of the storage locker on our balcony. Checking further, he was able to see that she’d laid at least one egg. It’s too tall for even him to see, but he held the camera up and checked out the results. (We’ve since learned that robins apparently lay one egg at a time, but can lay many over a series of days – so there may be more there now).

We decided to name our robin, Mackenzie Robin (after my initial suggestion of “Rockin” was thrown out). I like the name, but we had agreed when deciding on names not to name our child anything on a top 20 list for this year – no name that would immediately tell you what year (within 5) the baby was born. (Like, I was born in the mid -70’s (yes, I am old!). When I meet someone who might be about my age, but might be 10 years older (or younger, as the case may be) and she tells me her name is Jennifer – I can probably guess she is my age. If she said, Ashley, I’d guess she was 10 years younger. Years from now, this will work in the same way for Emma and Isabella.) Mackenzie’s offspring are not yet named, but they will have to have androgynous names (pretty easy to do on the top 20 list these days), as I don’t know that we’ll ever get close enough to know their gender… Not that Mackenzie and I are necessarily that close, but there are eggs involved so, you know, I’m guessing. I suppose technically it could be a stay at home dad robin… But I don’t want to make this into a social commentary! ;)

Today, Mackenzie was off doing her robin thing (in this case, I will suggest she was “rockin.”) and a crow showed up! I don’t think I even knew that crows eat other birds young / eggs, but my whacked out hormones had me running to the sliding door to pound on the glass – thus setting off the dog barking – to scare it off! You know that this had to be caused by a hormonal imbalance as I didn’t even worry (for more than a couple of seconds) that this pounding would wake up the baby sleeping nearby! Miracle of miracles, the baby understands the importance of defending the small members of the circle of life and she WENT BACK TO SLEEP after the disruption!

I, however, have not so easily calmed! I’m all riled up and planning to stake out the balcony from future “invaders.” This might be a bit more than the average normal response…. Should I worry?