It's all good...

While I was out of town this past weekend, the baby robin fledged. I missed it. This is the last photo of that huge, healthy baby. Its empty nest will be repurposed for The Field Museum's N.W. Harris Learning Collection, a wonderful lending library of artifacts, specimens and learning activities available to Chicago Public School teachers. It will be sterilized/sanitized and added to a boxed assemblage entitled "A GOOD EGG," which includes real eggs of over two dozen different birds, reptiles and amphibians. With over 600 boxes ready to lend, the Harris Collection is a terrific opportunity for students to have access to real specimens for learning about the natural world through "up-close-and-personal" observation. So...in the end, our overachieving mother robin can be proud that the beautiful nest she built was museum quality. It's all good.

ready to leave the nest

The unhatched egg was still at the bottom of the nest.