Since the snow storm, I’ve kept an eye on the wild birds around the area. I wish I had birdseed on hand but we ran out. Hopefully I can buy more over the weekend (if it doesn’t snow again!)
We left the heads of the sunflowers that grew along the south side of the house in a big heap right next to the foundation. Truthfully, my father in law took them down but left the heads for me to clean up. He forgot to mention them to me, and then John told me, and I just kept forgetting about them. I meant to hang them up on the trees on the edge of the clearing by the vegetable garden. But leaving them in a pile near the warm spot where the furnace and dryer exhaust pipes breathe warm air into the frigid days was actually a good thing. The birds have found them, and they are enjoying them. Pierre is also enjoying the show – from the safety of the windowsill. Poor guy. Lucky birds that there’s a pane of glass between him and the gathering flock!
The robins, though, leave me puzzled. I’ve always thought that seeing a robin was the first sign of spring. Maybe that was a Long Island/New York City thing? Do they even migrate? Right after the snowstorm, I saw dozens of red breasted robins up in a tree on the roadside, and more flew up from the sanctuary of a huge juniper bush where they huddled under the boughs for protection from the storm. Yesterday when I walked Shadow, I noticed that they were all scratching in a meager patch of earth that was uncovered roadside by the melting snow. I’m wondering if they’re hanging out near my neighbor’s cattle fields because the cattle dung has insects in it? Anyone know whether robins migrate? If not, what do they eat around here when it’s so cold? I thought they were only insect eaters?
We’ve also figured out where our flock of bob white quail hide! There’s a huge brush pile off to the side of the driveway, directly opposite where we see the quail. After the snow, we saw a clear set of tracks leading from the brush pile and out into the woods…the quail appeared to hide in the pile, then after the storm, bobbed their way back into the woods. It’s been fascinating to try to figure out all the animal tracks in the snow, but I’ll be glad when I see the earth again under all this snow and ice.
Robins do migrate and they really seem to be on the move the last few weeks.
Get that seed because more snow is on the way! I spotted a family of bobwhites in our yard a few years ago. They disappeared one by one and we think the fox ate good. Sigh… ID’ing tracks in the snow is such fun….
I have loads of robins the entire winter. At first I thought the same thing, about them being a sign of spring. They do ‘migrate’, but not like the other migratory birds. It is apparently all relative to where they are to begin with. The robins we’re seeing now may normally hang out a little north from where we are. And the robins we see in the spring may actually be hanging out just a little south of us now. Something to that effect, anyway. They can travel in really large groups during the winter. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what robins actually do but from what I’ve read, they are always around.
Now, does that make any sense at all?! I need to do a little more research and maybe write a post on what I find!