Robins of Winter

What's with the camera, Buster? - REK

Every winter we see large flocks of American robins.  Sometimes they are moving through a forested area, other times they are in a scattered flock in hayed fields.  Saturday evening we noticed the field behind the barn was alive with the birds.

I went out with a telephoto lens to take photographs from the barn to avoid flushing them.  They were clustered tight to the ground, occasionally hopping but not flying.  I took photographs of individual fields of view and back home could count 240 plus birds, our new record for Bull Mills.



We frequently will find flocks in the eastern red cedars that cover the former glades behind the house.  They will be spread out, unlike cedar waxwings that tend to feast their way through individual trees.  Robins and cedar wax wings then help to provide the cedar "berries" (actually miniature cones) with wings, spreading them with their droppings adding a bit of fertilizer as a bonus.  Additionally cedars provide birds with good protection from winter winds at night.

Allaboutbirds says that robins have been reported in every one of the continental United States in the winter.  They disappear around our urban yards to form winter flocks ranging from 50 in the northern climes to thousands in the south.  "Usually these flocks appear where there are plentiful fruits on trees and shrubs, such as crabapples, hawthorns, holly, juniper, and others."  Our "cedars" are actually Juniperus virginiana, locally the most abundant source of fruit for birds.  Charley Burwick says, "We had several million counted on our Taney County Christmas Bird Count a number of years ago. "Who knew that he could count that high?"