Our second clutch of robins for 2021 flew the nest earlier this week. (I wrote about our 2020 clutches here.) There were three, born Bastille Day: Etienne, Jil and Daniel (named after singers Etienne Daho, Jil Caplan and Daniel Balavoine). Daniel left first, then Jil and…a full 24 hours later, Etienne was still sitting there, enjoying his space and enjoying his parents bringing him worms. He was like one of those kids who won’t move out of his parents house – a real failure to launch. What was truly comical – and a bit unnerving – was that Eleanor and Henri (Etienne’s parents) spent the last few hours he was in the nest perched in our cherry tree (located just behind the nest) squawking at their son. And I mean, squawking really loudly. We had never seen this behaviour. They appeared to be frantic, and we started to worry that maybe Etienne was sick or injured and couldn’t fly. I called a friend of mine who does wildlife rehabilitation and described the situation. She assured me that Etienne was fine and that his parents were simply encouraging him to leave. In other words, it was robin flight school. What they were squawking was, “Fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, FLY!!!!!” And finally, he did. We shall miss them and hope for a third year of clutches in 2022, a third year that we are able to witness.