Oh, Great
Once again we must endure the arrival of the Turdus migratorius [the accent is on the first syllable] or American robin as they descend in their horde to strip a local variety of tree of its purple berries which are rapidly processed and deposited on everything.
Things are always brighter after their visit, because if you don’t scrub everything down almost immediately the stains from the partially digested berries are damn near impossible to get off. The berries are slightly fermented, so you end up with a neighborhood of loud avian drunks – sort of a cross between The Birds and Animal House.
In normal years we could expect things to start getting warmer, but they are arriving on a day when the overnight temperature will dip below freezing. This year is much wetter than normal and cooler.
15 comments
i was going to look that up in my bird book, but there are cats sleeping on it.
You were going to look up robins? The last week of February you just look out your window. If you haven’t got them in your neighborhood, you must not have any sugarberry or camphor trees.
I don’t think they’ll be showing up here in Chicago any time soon. We still have a foot of snow on the ground and temperatures below freezing. Not an earthworm in sight.
So you can keep them a little while longer before sending them north to poop on my car. 😀
You really don’t want to tempt fate by invoking these beasties.
You’re safe for a while because there’s always a North wind during the cold spells, which will keep them South for a while, at least until they sober up.
But… but… they’re robins! First sign of spring, and all that crap! Birds of song and story, and British poetry, even if the Brits have a different bird from the godforsaken one that poops on everything here. How could you not welcome robins with great joy and open arms? Provided, of course, you’re wearing something easily washable…
They’re just being robins and I park my car in the garage. I look forward to seeing them every year. They have quite a party in my backyard. I keep the birdbaths full and they get drunk and splash and have a great time. There are a few out there now only we had a little cold snap last night with a low of 25F. They are going to have to wait until the ground thaws a little before they will get many worms. The berries are holding out though.
The robins passed me by, but I got the usual flock of parrots on Sunday morning eating the kumquats out of my tree in the backyard. They make a lot of noise, too, and I suspect their crap is just as fetid as the robins’.
Good thing the seagulls stick to the coast…
None of you have anything to complain about. Google this:
grackles “Rice University”
At least the Ecology – Evolutionary Biology folks get a lot of research and papers out of their presence. The rest of us get spots on our umbrellas (you don’t dare not carry one in the season) and the smell of grackles felled by epidemics and rotting in deep puddles after rain.
I understand it’s better now than it was in my day. It could scarcely be worse.
To have worms, FM, you have to have real dirt and we have sand, so berries is all they get unless they want palmetto bugs.
MB, the seagulls are the everyday problem, as I live a block or so from the water, but their mess is a lot easier to clean off.
We have grackles, Steve, but not in the hundreds, like the robins. Usually a dozen or two will show up after the lawns are mowed to go after the insects stirred up.
There’s nothing so sad and yet at the same time funny as seeing a “drunk” cedar waxwing flying into trees.
Haven’t seen drunk robins though. Would HATE to see the local crows on a bender, though.
I would hate to see the seagulls become vegetarians and get into the berries.
look out my window? you’ve got to be kidding. when 12 cats hit the sliding glass door at a dead run and all at once, their teeth chattering with anticipation, it makes a lasting impression on all birds within a quarter-mile radius.
this neighborhood is given more to azaleas and camellias for ornamentals, and hawks for policing the smaller critters, but a previous house i lived in had a pyracantha bush just outside the front door. the avian panama city beach right on my front steps.
no, of course i wasn’t going to look up robins. it was just an excuse to remark on the fact there were a bunch of cats sleeping on top one of my bird books at that moment.
Well, if it’s a book on a table, it’s almost a sacred duty for a cat to be sleeping on it.
It must be the hawks. The only hawks with an obvious presence are the little “pigeon hawks” which I only know about when it is suddenly raining feathers as another dove bites the dust, or, more accurately, gets bitten and talons by the little falcon.
Purple berries… elderberries? Hmm, I once knew an old black lady who made elderberry wine… and my grandmother made elderberry jelly.
– Badtux the Vegetation Penguin
These berries are from the cinnamomum camphora or camphor tree, which is another invasive species and the source of camphor oil, so the taste might be a little off in wine, unless you’re a robin.