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January 7, 2000 |
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the secret life of robins |
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Today's Bird Sightings:
Today's Reading: Winter from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake, Wild Fruits by Henry David Thoreau
Copyright © 2000, Janet I. Egan |
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Everybody knows the red red robin who hops around on suburban lawns. But how much do we really know about it? The robin redbreast we remember from childhood stories and folklore, all those European children's books, is a totally different being - it looks more like a dark brown version of our familiar Eastern bluebird. Our robin is actually a kind of thrush. The colonists named it after their familiar robin redbreast and the name stuck, no doubt confusing countless generations of American preschoolers who are picturing the wrong bird in all their fairy tales and nursery rhymes. The big secret though is that many robins spend the winter here in New England. They roost in stands of pines or other evergreens near marshes where there are berries to eat. The ones I saw today probably aren't the same individuals I saw nesting on the refuge this summer. Those robins have probably gone south, maybe as far as Florida. These guys are probably from Labrador or someplace up in Nunavut. If someone who doesn't know about their secret life happens to spot them, we get a rash of newspaper articles about an early spring. That shows you how well they keep their secret! Robins mostly like to eat fruit. Forbush lists wild
cherries, wild grapes, mountain ash Thoreau, in Wild Fruits, talks about winterberries as sometimes gone by November and other times abundant 'til January. And he mentions robins, partridges, and mice feeding on them. Whether Thoreau's winterberries are Forbush's winter berries and whether either are the ones I saw today, I have only a few clues. Oddly my vast library is heavier on birds than on berries. I think the ones I see at Plum Island (photograph above) are Ilex verticillata, a species of holly. Thoreau's description matches what I saw but he calls them Prinos verticillatus. Forbush just calls them winter berries. In any case, they're bright red, last well into January, and robins eat them during their secret winter life. |
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Robins
are so closely associated with spring that it's startling to
see them in winter even when I know they're here. With blue
sky and bare branches all around them, they're quite a
sight. I startled them too, I guess, because they took off
from their roost tree and fluttered around a little before
they settled down again. Despite all the fluttering, they
were pretty quiet. They're not claiming territories or
trying to attract mates so they're not doing that "cheery
lee" (who is Lee and why is she so happy?) song so evocative
of spring.
berries, red cedar berries, Virginia juniper berries,
bayberry, bittersweet, and buckthorn in that order of
preference. Forbush refers to their eating "winter berries"
but I can't tell if he means just berries that are still
around in winter or he means winterberries. There are
certainly tons of winterberries around this winter. The red
of the winterberries stands out among the sand and the
golden-colored winter grasses. The red of the winterberries
and the red of the robins livens up an otherwise muted
winter color scheme.