Don's Blog Robins - Addendum

It is always humbling to find out that you didn't know something you thought you knew. The American Robin (Turdus migratorius)
is a most common bird. Wherever I have lived they have lived year round. Given that their name is migrators it is not a stretch to think that they might migrate. So my group of robins could just have been part of a migration. The apparently can fly in groups of fifty to thousands. Because I have not seen it does not preclude this.

They usually separate in the daytime to forage for food and congregate together at night in the trees.

Now as to their group name - all that sent in a suggested name are correct. There is no official ornithological name for a group of
American robins. In Britain the Royal Ornithology Trust has named robins in a group a 'round' of robins. And there it gets interesting.
American robins were named after the shape and color of British robins but the birds are not the same. The American robin is a thrush
while the British robin is an Old World flycatcher.

Each spring at mating time one of my robins starts flying into my widows. Crash!!!! Crash!!!! If I do anything to have it stop then it just moves to another side of the house and Crash!!!! No window has been broken and after 3-4 weeks it stops. I have not seen this written up but my
opinion is that during the mating season the robin sees its reflection as another male competitor and he attacks it.

Its fun to keep on learning.