Pretty Blue Eggs - Here We Go Again

We originally thought she'd abandoned her nest
to build a new one in our tulip tree.  I saw her with a branch sticking out of her mouth a little more than a week ago and there seemed to be a lot of activity with the male robin surrounding the tulip tree. Neither of them had been back to the nest since the two little ones fledged.

Soon after that I saw both of them up on the old nest and it looked like they were having a discussion and inspecting it.  I think that he was trying to convince her that this nest is perfectly fine and to go ahead and use it again.  Why go to all the trouble and build a new one when this one is still in good shape and no one has bothered it? That is what Mike would tell me if I were a little bird, only I don't listen too well.  It's exactly what he was telling me about the kitchen.  Why rip it out when it works perfectly fine?

Anyway back to the love birds.  After that little chat I noticed she was sitting in the nest periodically for two days.  Sometimes she'd pick up a piece of straw and shift it to the left or right.  I kept checking but there were no eggs to be found.  I was getting nervous.  Wondering if she changed her mind about it in the end.  Wondering if she was going to go back to building herself a new nest.

And then on June 16th...

June 18th...

June 19th...

and finally June 20th.  She now has her clutch of eggs.

Why did she skip a day on June 17th you might ask?  It wasn't for lack of trying. There was a lot of noise in our backyard while she was sitting in her nest trying to do just that.  The PG&E crew was here cutting down a tree next to our shed.  I could see she was nervous about the noise and I think she just couldn't do it with all those men around.

What is different this time around is that she began sitting on the first egg on the first night before the others were laid.  Last time round she first laid each egg, one each day like normal, but didn't begin actually sitting on them until they were all four laid.