... Until the first day of Spring.
I don't understand why people look for robins as a sign of approaching Spring.
Ours never leave. At least, they never seem to go anywhere.
Maybe our robins just migrate a few hundred miles south,
to be replaced by robins from Michigan,
who think our winter tropical compared to theirs.
At any rate, this fella had all the berries to himself, and danced
from branch to branch, sometimes hanging nearly
upside down to reach for an isolated bit of fruit that had
been missed by earlier scavengers.
I have seen robins gathered at the base of a berry tree
during a snowy January, eating berries until they
were so full they could not fly. There were
at least fifty of them, nearly equidistant apart,
exercising some sort of "professional courtesy" that allowed
them to let each other feed at the tree without
interference from that lousy territorial imperative thingy.
If birds can do it over berries, why can't Congress?
2 comments:
Our robins stick around all year, too, Speedway. They're aggressive little buggers, though; unlike yours, they fight like crazy if there are two of them in one garden.
Our robins are aggressive, too, Dive. Last spring I witnessed a pretty violent disagreement between a couple robins that was serious, a definite cock fight. That's why I thought they were extending each other an assassins' "professional courtesy" - survival to fight another day- because they were all in the same rut on that occasion.
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