Robins are an interesting bird in the sense that they can be pretty damn aggressive and territorial when they want to be. There was a summer when I was a kid that one mother robin decided she didn’t like me using our family’s back deck. I grew up in the countryside, in a strange 2 story apartment like building with a tall fire escape deck that leads from the top floor to ground level. On this deck, we had a crappy tin shed that I had decided to turn into my fort that summer. Unfortunately for me and my shed fort, a mother robin had nested directly underneath where the shed was and she didn’t take too kindly to me being that close to her nest, even if I couldn’t reach it.

She use to fly at anyone who would go into the backyard until one day she meet her match in the archenemy to all birds… Glass… Thankfully her chicks had grown up at this point and had all left the nest.

When I was a kid, I couldn’t understand why this robin would be so stupid as to constantly attack us just for getting close to her nest, we didn’t know they were even there until after she had started trying to attack us. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that’s just what any good mother does. They protect their chicks, end of the story.