Baby birds had been showing up regularly. It is hilarious to watch sometimes as the exasperated parents try to wean them. When we found this little guy in the yard though, we knew something was wrong. He showed no fear of us, and in fact acted like he wanted us, or anyone else nearby, to feed him.

A baby bird begging a cat for food is a weird sight. This photo was actually staged, and this was a close as we could get Berf to get to the little bird (Berf is blind, and since he didn't know what was making all that cheeping noise, he was very cautious). The first time we witnessed the bird begging from the cat, the little guy actually ran right up to Berf's face, within a couple of inches! Pat beat it over there just in case, but Berf never took a swat at him.

We first saw him in the yard on Tuesday the 15th. We don't know if he was just naturally slow, or if maybe he fledged just a little too soon... Robins build pretty crappy nests, so maybe it just disintegrated and he "fledged" before he meant to. These pictures was taken on Friday the 18th, as the date stamp from the new-fangled ZX-50 shows. This was the first test roll though the new camera.

Alas, the little guy didn't make it. We found his remains on Saturday the 19th... it looked like a hawk got him. We couldn't think of anything we could do to protect him other than caging him, and that just didn't seem right... his parents still were feeding him occasionally. So we just made sure he had adequate cover close by, and hoped he would have enough instinct to use it, and let nature take its course. You win a few, you lose a few.