For Release January 30, 2005

The Robins are Here, Does That Mean it's Spring?

AGRI-VIEWS
by Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent

With the warmer weather, in recent weeks, I have received numerous calls about all the robins that people were seeing in town. The presence of these robins prompted concern that they weren't supposed to be here and they'd freeze to death, or possible joy that spring was just around the corner. The truth is that neither of these assumptions are correct.

We have robins in the area all year long, not the same robins, but we do have robins. The ones that are here in spring and summer to breed, head south to Oklahoma and Texas in the fall. They are replaced by robins from locations to the north. Sometime in the late winter or early spring, the robins here now will slowly start to move out and our summer robins will return.

Most people don't know that robins are around all year because the robins aren't in yards scratching around for worms and insects. Robins, along with their cousin bluebirds and other members of the thrush family, survive the winter by feeding on fruits and berries. You can find robins in ornamental fruit trees, hackberries, groves of red cedars, just about any place there are trees or shrubs with fruit or berries.

A lot of our flowering crabapple trees or ornamental pears will set small fruit that doesn't drop off in the fall when the leaves do. In fact many of these will hold their fruit all winter long. At first nothing seems to eat these hard little fruits. But as the winter moves on and they go through several freeze and thaw cycles, they start to soften up and become quite palatable. When the birds move into an ornamental fruit tree this time of year it can be entertaining to watch. Robins, Cedar Waxwings, even European Starlings will move into a tree in big numbers and strip the tree clean in a day or two. Lately I've been having robins in my holly bush gulping down the holly berries. Again, the freezing and thawing have softened these fruits/berries up to the point that they become attractive to birds.

When the weather warmed up and the ice and snow melted off, the robins came back into our yards. Even though the ground is still frozen, there are little insect and insect like critters that can be found nestled into the leaf litter and dead grass. So they are scratching away looking for insects and any left over fruits and berries that may have fallen down into the litter.

One place you can always find robins in the winter is around open water. While all birds have a very efficient system that doesn't waste water, they still need water and it can be a challenge to find open water in cold weather. Anyone with a heated bird bath will tell you how much water a flock of robins will go through in cold weather. They really enjoy taking baths, even in subzero weather, and their vigorous bathing will splash a lot of water out of a bird bath.

So if the appearance of robins doesn't mean it's spring, what can we depend on to tell us spring is on the way? Fortunately, for most birds, migration and breeding are triggered not by temperatures, but by day length. Plants aren't so fortunate, so they regularly get tricked into breaking bud too early in the early spring or late winter and the blossoms or buds get nipped by cold weather.

If you really want to know when spring has arrived, wait for the true migrants like Purple Martins, Chimney Swifts, House Wrens or kingbirds. When the wrens start singing from the fencerow or the swifts are knifing overhead and chittering away the evening, the end of frosty weather won't be far behind!

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