The robin’s nest lies empty, and four little newly feathered babies are braving the unseasonably cold spring. The wind ruffles the baby featherlets. Drips of rain plaster the down onto their skinny pink bodies. What little body heat they had must be replenished quickly with food brought to them by their parents.

Junior #1 sits, wondering what to do.

Junior #2 sits a little more hidden, waiting for his mother to feed him.

Mother robin wonders where she should look for food for her brood. She also needs to find Junior #3 and #4.

I felt so sorry for them all that I went out into the miserable, cold wind, and dug up a few shovelfuls of dirt in my garden, knowing that it is infested with the grubs of the ten-lined beetles. I threw them onto the upturned lid of an old garbage can.

These grubs hide deep in the soil and wait for potatoes to grow so they can eat them before I try to harvest them.

Then, satiated, they wait for the first very hot day to come out of the ground and fly around as ten-lined beetles, again, as they do every year, looking for me so they can land on my back where I can’t reach them, and I have to run around the yard screaming until the Captain comes out to save me.

But this year I’m getting my revenge on them. At the same time I’m helping the mother robin to feed her brood.

Watch this video of how “Man” (in this case “Woman”) has helped Nature.

Then you can tell me if I did a bad thing or a good thing.