Readers flock together, but resist urge to tar and feather

The early bird might get the worm, but the e-mailing readers get the last word on my column about my skirmish with a mother robin:

"I was horrified after reading your column about your backyard battle. Shame on you!" scolds Julie Cooke of Bloomingdale, whose feathers were really ruffled by my column. "I don't know which was worse: moving a nest with an egg in it, or putting nails on a platform that could impale the robin. What were you thinking?"

As I told the nice federal officer who enforces the international migratory bird treaty, I didn't want to hurt the bird, just encourage her to move to a better neighborhood. By doing so I missed a wonderful opportunity, continues Julie, who once left a nest atop their porch light.

"What a joy it was when the eggs hatched, and my husband and I got to watch the baby birds grow and take their first flight," Julie recalls. "Yes, there was some mess to clean up some days, but it was educational and wonderful to watch."

Reader Nancy P. is living that nature dream right now.

"Almost two weeks ago, I went to change my wreath on my front door and found a robin's nest on it with four eggs in it," Nancy e-mails. "My sister had told me about not removing the nest because of the migratory bird treaty, so I did some research online."

So far, what I'm getting from her e-mail is that her sister was much more helpful than my sisters.

"I found that it takes about two weeks for the babies to hatch (watch for my birth announcement!), and then they stay in the nest for another two weeks," says Nancy, who includes a photograph of the nest and bird in the wreath. While acknowledging that the robin "squawks" at anyone who comes to the front door, and predicting that "my kids are not going to appreciate baby birds chirping right outside their bedroom windows," Nancy did the right thing by letting nature do its thing.

"Just relax and enjoy the nursery," Nancy concludes.

"I do enjoy your column (most days)," Julie adds, "but I was really surprised by what you wrote (about the robin). Not only is what you did illegal, it's really immoral. Now get out there and embrace nature!"

I'd say that I've learned my lesson, but careful reader Tom LeFeber, a butcher from Des Plaines, notes that "you haven't changed" since the early 1990s. As proof, he mails me a 1993 column I wrote about battling the bunnies in our garden. In it, I quoted LeFeber humorously taking me to task for a 1992 column I wrote about my skirmishes with squirrels. LeFeber sent my squirrel column to a publication called the Dick E. Bird News. That now-defunct Acme, Mich., paper, which billed itself as "The World's Greatest Newspaper Ever," bestowed upon me the "Dumb Cluck of the Month Award."

All these years later, while I love and defend nature elsewhere in our environment, I apparently still am prone to dumb cluck bouts of a "not in my backyard" attitude.

So instead of proclaiming that I've learned my lesson, I'll only say that I continue to be taught. Readers (and the forgiving folks at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) do their best to educate me. But nature may be the best teacher.

The frighteningly realistic snake image I hung above our back door to discourage the robin from building another nest on our porch light worked. But that doesn't mean I bested the red-breasted rival.

The mother bird opted to build a nest in the second-floor eave, next to our bedroom window, where her chicks soon will serve as my early morning alarm clock. The porch isn't exactly a nature-free zone either.

When I come home, I walk up the porch stairs with no interference, not even a peep, from the robin. I am at peace. Then I flinch, recoil and suffer a scare every time as for a split-second I fear that our porch light now is home to a nest of snakes.