According to Annenburg Media (its “Journey North” site), the first American robins were reported around Paradise during the past couple weeks. These may be some of the mostly-male birds which spend the winter wandering around the region, following food and getting a jump on staking out territories to show potential mates. Still, given that I have been expecting spring for a couple months now, and the song of robin brings spring, I’m ready.
Ready or not, spring can’t really arrive until I hear that half-hour-long rising and falling “cheery-up, cheery-me, cheery-up, cheery-me” song of daylight and warmth. Since I was a kid in East Wenatchee, for some reason, that song makes me want to dig worms and offer them up. I just haven’t heard it – yet. We will probably have to wait until we begin seeing the larger flocks of birds returning from wintering grounds (as far south as Guatemala) over the next few weeks.
You can track our robins, by the way, along with dozens of other birds, at the Annenburg Media site, www.learner.org/jnorth. The site is created to support teaching and learning, and anyone can come play. On the site you will be able to hear robin songs and sounds, keep track of what they are eating as they work their way north (reports of kelp, seaweed, dried berries and small fish this year), and check up on any of a couple dozen critters on live cameras across the globe. Even in the midst of the dozens of exotic and rare animals and birds you will find on the site, our American robin is somehow unique.
When it comes to food and habitat, robins are generalists, like us. They eat a variety of stuff (found by sight) and occupy about any habitat in Washington below timberline and outside marshes. They are pretty common breeding birds in Upper County spruce‑fir forests.
On our lawns or in our trees, robins seem pretty tame, with easy lives, but in more remote alpine and wilderness areas they are often extremely wary. We don’t think much about it these days, but only a few generations ago robins were widely hunted for food, and related thrushes (European blackbirds, as in “…baked into a pie”) still are eaten in parts of Europe and elsewhere. Then, too, just forty years ago robins were in deep trouble because of DDT spraying. Earthworms digested the sprayed leaves and the poisons ended up in the robins. Hundreds of thousands died outright, and reproduction failed for others because DDT causes shell thinning of eggs. Post-DDT, the birds quickly recovered.
Now, we await those March and April courtship rituals, often reminding me of the young people I see on campus each spring; groups of males chase a given female until she takes a shine to one of them. Once the field has been narrowed, the male struts around her with his tail spread, throat inflated and wings shaking.
After all the proper vows are made, the female will build a soft‑lined nest of mud and grass. It will be in the crotch of a tree or on a building – generally fairly low. The adults will belligerently defend the nest, which may hold half a dozen inch‑long turquoise blue eggs. The female will set the eggs, but hatchlings will be fed by both parents.
Once the first brood fledges, the pair may build another nest, into which the hen will lay more eggs. If the fledged young are not yet independent enough, the male will care for them while the female incubates the second clutch of eggs. Rearing baby robins is no small job, since a brood of just three may eat 95 or 100 meals a day. Sometimes, the robins have help; observations have been made of house finches helping adult robins bring food to young. Finches have also been seen sitting nearby and singing as another adult feeds the insatiable youngsters.
In keeping with the wishes of the Reecer Creek Rod, Gun, Working Dog & Outdoor Think Tank Benevolent Association’s Science Education Committee, I include the following. Robin’s scientific name is Turdus migratorius. It may reach ten inches in length, and makes its living mostly off grubs, insects (and their larvae), earthworms and fruit.
I urge you to spend some time on the Annenburg Media site. You and your whole family will find pictures, videos, wild cams, songs and cool new things at www.learner.org/jnorth.
I love watching these fascinating birds. They bring me hope for a good gardening year, for spring, for summer. I need that song, though…
