A couple of weeks ago, my parents found a baby robin in their backyard.  He had fallen out of his nest and looked near death, but they managed to save him, feed him worms, and nurse him back to health.  They released the bird about a week later, and it was soon following around a mother robin in the yard and flourishing.

My two young daughters were fascinated by this process.  Less than 24 hours after the robin was released, my six-year-old found a baby bird in our yard, which we also nursed back to health.  My little one did a wonderful job of caring for the young bird.  She would dig for worms in the yard and gently feed it every few hours.  The bird would chirp excitedly the second it heard her voice or saw her face.  She trained it to sit on her finger and walk around with her.

We spent time outdoors with the baby bird, so that she’d get adjusted when the time came to fly away.  My daughter would set the little birdy down on the grass, and it would hop around and follow her wherever she went.

About a week ago, the bird began to spread its wings and fly/hop to greater heights around the house, so we decided it was time to release her before she began nesting in our ceiling fan.  My daughters fed her a hearty last meal of worms, gave her a tearful good-bye, and then placed her gently at the base of a tree in our yard (out of reach of the dog’s electric fence boundary).  After we went to the pool and went swimming, we came home a couple of hours later, and the bird was still hopping around our yard but beginning to venture towards the woods that border our property.  We haven’t seen her in the past few days, but the girls like to think that every little robin they see might be their own little baby bird.