I like to write about the annual robins who nest on my back porch. I enjoy watching their month-long odyssey from the home building to the final fledgling fly-off.

Last year’s model must have liked the neighborhood, because Rosie Robin (as I had named her) is back. And she has brought along two friends. I don’t know whether she is the same momma robin for sure, but she certainly looks like last year’s model … same red breast, same yellow bill, same black, beady, watchful eyes – amazingly just like the picture in my bird book. And her two sidekicks look identical, enough to think they might have been triplets who once shared the same nest. I also vividly remember her personality, and all three of the new homesteaders have the same intolerant, scolding attitude.

Last spring’s mother-to-be built her nursery on the same top shelf of the baker’s rack that robins have preferred for years. It’s a good safe place on our open porch, and I like having them there despite the mess. Ah yes, it all came back to me – the mess. Either late pregnancy is a very exciting time for mother birds, or it is so labor intensive that she doesn’t have time to fly back and forth to the robin porta-potty. Instead, she decorated the entire baker’s rack with her … uh … leavings. I think every twig that went into the circular cradle was accompanied by a large deposit of guano. It’s a big nest.

That nest from last spring was such a work of art, that I left it there all summer. I couldn’t bear to throw it away and it over-wintered on the top shelf, unmoved. So, did this year’s mother robin make use of the ready-built accommodations? Nope. Rosie has built right bedside the old nest, turning the baker’s rack into a duplex. I guess these robins are like today’s newlyweds who don’t want to start married life in a small, older apartment. They want all-new quarters with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. These feathered mothers-to-be are just as fussy. Only new will do.

But Rosie is only one of the trio of robins that are currently nesting at my house. I’m thinking that she truly is last year’s blabber-mouth robin and she spread the word in the red-breasted community. “Hey girls, there’s good digs over at this white Cape Cod. Follow me and we’ll each stake out a different corner of the property.” My budding garden is a well-supplied construction site of raw materials for home building. No lease, no mortgage, no building permits.

So Rosie, the ringleader, chose the familiar location near the back porch door. Then Roberta Robin chose the rhododendron just outside our front door, and Rachel Robin picked the rhodies along the path to the garden shed. I can imagine how that conversation started: “Ok, girls, now that we’re settling in and working so hard, it’s time to have a little fun. Let’s take turns scaring the bejeesus out of the white-haired lady every time she comes out of the house.”

And they do. Each door I step through is met with a jet takeoff from the nearest nest, often accompanied by a verbal scolding. I used to think the birds did this to attract attention away from the nest, or that they were merely afraid of me. Now, as they lift off and engage their afterburners, scaring me half to death, I know it’s a plot. They’re out to get me.

And they are probably in cahoots with the chipmunks. I’ve known for years that the chipmunks’ goal is complete takeover of the property. If they could get rid of me there’d be no more have-a-heart traps, no one filling in their burrows. They’d finally have the run of the place. I’m assuming they’ve engaged the robins to induce the cardiac arrest.

I am resisting, when I remember. I tell myself each time I exit, “Relax, it’s only a bird.” I figure that I only have to survive these scare tactics until the bitty birds leave home. Then I can reclaim the pastoral sanity that is my springtime gardening.

I do have one concern, though. If Rosie brought two sisters back with her this year, and all three hatch airborne squads, next year could bring an entire attack squadron. Fuggedaboudit. I’d be housebound for the entire month of April. Plus. I’m already running out of R names – Rowena, Rosalind … Rotten Robin?

This whole situation is for the birds. Where is Alfred Hitchcock when I need him?

Marcy O’Brien writes from Warren.