Two weeks ago, they were as naked as grocery store chickens.
Three feather-free, fine-skinned babies, eyelids bulging like marbles in their bony heads, cartoon birds with crayon yellow beaks.
The nest seemed to appear overnight, nestled on a wood railing that once provided support for an awning, just a few feet from my back door.
Inside, three ocean blue eggs.
I was happy to host the family on my patio -- Welcome, Sweet Mama Robin! -- although I have a history with birds, and it’s not pretty.
The baby bird that appeared in front of my minivan and froze, staring at me with Gene Wilder eyes. The blue jay that flung itself into my windshield as I drove to deliver an injured squirrel to a Wildlife Rescue volunteer.
The robin in front of the grocery store with the broken wing that I scooped into a cardboard apple box.
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There were no happy endings.
So I was rooting pretty hard for these three.
I kept tabs on them.
I took videos, standing on tiptoe, holding my phone above the nest, inadvertently causing the still-blind birds to rise in unison with beaks open wide for worms, like long-necked Jack-in-the-Box clowns.
I encouraged their parents, who seemed to not appreciate my support. The mama bird staring impervious and impassively as I watched through the screen door, then flying off in a huff if I hovered too close.
I realize bird babies are everywhere, a one-act play opening in the crooks of oak trees and the boughs of evergreens all over Lincoln each spring.
Like the life of a human infant, writ small. Birth to graduation in 13 days.
Helpless and hapless to independent in a blink. The way it feels to a parent when the cap and gown appears and the life you nursed and nurtured heads off without looking back.
I also realized I knew nothing more about song birds than how to tell the difference between a cardinal, a blue jay and a sparrow. Now I know -- because I witnessed it -- that baby birds excrete fecal sacs which their parents haul away in their beaks.
I know that all baby birds do is eat and sleep and, eventually, cheep (early on they just open their beaks in silent Edvard Munch screams). Oh, and grow like a pan of Jiffy Pop on a stovetop.
It wasn’t long before mama bird rose higher and higher atop her brood as they grew plump and covered with speckled feathers. She looked resigned (and perhaps pregnant again).
And then, late last week, the storms came.
It rained. And then it rained some more. Wind whipped water under the eave and soaked the twigs and grass of the nest, while mama robin spread herself wide, like a feathered umbrella.
She sat and sat, alert and still as I called out to her from inside my dry, warm house. Good job, Mama!
I found the dead baby bird on the patio the next morning, a few feet from the nest. We buried it under the flowering crab with a twig to mark the spot. We never found baby No. 2.
It seemed silly to mourn a bird. To ascribe grief to its parents, as if their tender care was rooted in love instead of instinct.
Then again, how do we know for sure?
We started pulling hard for the remaining robin, who appeared to be stuck between childhood and a civil service job with the remnants of baby bird fluff on its head and officious-looking orange breast feathers.
I checked the nest faithfully.
Sunday morning, I pulled a stepladder close so I could look down into the nest.
I have the video. Me on the ladder, talking baby talk, Mr. Baby looking startled.
And then.
Flying.
And me saying: Come back! Come back, Honey!
He didn’t come back.
But as he hopped and fluttered his parents gave me hell, swooping and squawking. I followed him all the way to the tall grass by the fence, where Dada Bird perched like a sentry.
Still, I worried all day.
So I called Nebraska Extension in Lancaster County on Monday, and talked to a nice, bird-loving associate named Soni Cochran.
She explained the difference between a nestling and a fledgling and the workings of a bird brain and how many broods a mama might have in a season (two or three) and that if Baby No. 3 from Brood No. 1 could fly out of his nest, he’d be just fine.
That it was time.
“You didn’t do anything wrong," she said. "It’s just like sending our kids off to college.â€