MOBILE
On his Outdoors blog, Rich Landers offers this report from birder Joanne Powell of Greenacres: “About 9 a.m. I was looking out at my backyard and hundreds of robins appeared, hung around for about 10 minutes then moved west. I went to my front porch and at least 300 robins were perched in the bare deciduous trees lining N. Hodges Rd. They seem to be moving west very slowly so keep an eye out.” More here.
Question: Have you seen flocks of robins in your back yard? And/or: Do you consider robin's to be the first sure sign that spring is on the way?
Yes, they have just returned this week… it is certainly a good sign…
That was the scene down here in Moscow beginning about a week and a half ago. My yard was full of a huge flock if robins the week before the Super Bowl, and I spent Super Bowl Sunday surrounded by about five different varieties of birds that I hadn’t seen since fall. Most of them have stuck around, except oy about 20 robins at a time instead of 200. I’ve got several mountain ash trees, and they love to eat the berries.
We had a huge flock of robins pick our hawthorn tree clean of berries on Saturday. When nary a berry was left, they were gone.
On Saturday I stepped out onto the front porch to get the mail, and was hit with a wall of sound: hundreds and hundreds of robins in every tree as far as I could see in our S Hill (Spokane) neighborhood. I called my daughter out and we sat on the porch and listened; it was the loudest cacophony of bird sound I’ve ever heard. So cool!
Yes. Last week the meandering hordes came as they do every year to strip three Mountain Ash Trees of their fermented berries. They then proceed to swoop drunkedly about the area and like salmon returning to spawn, drop their processed berry waste all over the cars in the driveway where it hardens in epoxy-like red goop.
What a lovely Spring tradition.