On April 18, my husband found a cup-shaped nest made of mud, grass, leaves and small twigs ensconced within our Norway spruce. He noticed an adult robin’s head peering out from the nest. Ever since that discovery, we’ve been engrossed in the robins’ activities.
We watched from a distance, counting the 12 to 14 days it would take for the eggs to hatch. Then, typically 13 days after that, the young would leave their comfy home to enter a big, wide world of trees, lawns and flowers.
We often saw an adult foraging for food on the lawn, which we never treat with pesticides. The robin would run a few steps, stop quickly and sometimes tilt its head. Naturalists in the late 1800s believed that meant the robin was “listening” for the movement of worms just beneath the soil.
Today, scientists believe robins also use visual and tactile clues while searching for worms. A robin may poke its bill in the soil to create a hole, then tilt its head to get a better look at where a worm might be lurking.
Regardless of how robins find worms, it’s always fun to watch the birds play tug of war with a creature just beneath the Earth’s surface. A worm’s tiny hairs grip the soil, making it difficult for robins to remove it without some effort.
A few weeks into the nesting cycle, we heard a large commotion from the spruce tree. The robins were squawking, scolding and flying back and forth. When it was all over, we looked at the nest through our binoculars and noticed not a single bird inside. We feared the worst, that a Cooper’s hawk had preyed on the nestlings.
A day later, however, we heard the distinct squeaking call of a baby robin. We looked in the yard to see a smaller version of the adult with a shorter tail and spots on its breast. It had fledged prematurely. It was quivering its wings while a parent plunked a meal in its mouth.
At least one of the young had made it. A closer look at the young revealed a yellow gape, or lining around its mouth. Many bird species young have this gape so the parents can more easily direct food into their mouths. A day later, we saw two more young robins and concluded three had survived. Most American robins lay four-egg clutches.
Much of this spring has been quite dry, making it difficult for robins to find worms, which come to the surface when it’s wet. But they found other meals for themselves and their offspring.
For example, one day an adult delivered what appeared to be a nymph of an annual cicada into the mouth of one of its young. These are not the periodical cicadas we witnessed in full force last spring, but rather the nymphs of the annual cicadas, which will emerge as adults later this season. We like to think of their regular loud buzzing calls beginning sometime in July as “the sound of summer.”
Robins not only slurp up worms from beneath the soil, they also dig up other yummies, including grubs, insects and insect larvae. Beginning in late summer and fall, they also eat many types of native fruits, including juniper berries, hackberry tree berries, wild black cherries and chokecherries. They get an extra bonus of protein when bugs are inside the fruits.
We watched for days, sitting quietly on a bench in the front yard, as the young chased their parents, begging for food. The adult robins came close by, intent on only one thing: satisfying their hungry young.
Soon, the robins will leave the confines of our yard and the neighborhood to join their brethren, and eventually fly several to thousands of miles away. Yes, robins do migrate, but it’s complicated. One biologist discovered that four robins spent summer in Alaska and winter in Texas, 5,000 miles away, while two robins in Washington, D.C., lived year-round within a four-mile radius. Here in northern Illinois in late summer, the robins roost in large flocks, often in cattail marshes, at night, then disperse across the landscape to feed during the day.
The robins nesting in our yard may not be the ones we see hanging around to eat berries in winter. Also, our nesting robins may fly south in fall, or even just fly far enough away to where they find berries to eat over the cold months.
Robins are known to carry Lyme disease, and an ecologist studying robin migration says what he learns, combined with climate change data, could forecast outbreaks of such diseases.
It’s humbling to think that studying the life of a robin, one of the most widespread songbirds in North America, may provide clues to help humans.
The post Outdoors column: American robins share family life with patient observers first appeared on Voxtrend News.
