All winter a lone robin has foraged in our yard for the stray berry or seed. It was chubby, and I felt optimistic for it, though I wondered what hardships had prevented its migration south with siblings and cousins. (Illness? Injury? Procrastination?) This week especially, with the world covered in snow, I have watched it…well, like a hawk, only with more noble intentions.
Just Me
It’s in our yard; therefore, I feel responsible for its survival. So today I threw a few pieces of bread on top of the snow to help it along. The robin didn’t notice, so I brought our bird book outside and played the daytime robin song to entice it. (I know, this is expressly forbidden among birders, and I will likely be flogged by David Attenborough.)
Just as I hoped, the robin discovered the food and flew off with a morsel. Avian happiness is apparently contagious, for it soon returned with a few friends. Forty-nine or so. They celebrated so loudly that grackles and crows, the neighborhood bullies, gathered round. Fights broke out, old friendships were renewed, baths were taken—it was a regular feather fest.
We can’t, however, feed two hundred birds, so sustainability is a real concern. (Now we know how the United Nations feels.) But with so many harbingers of spring, surely warmer weather is just a few snowstorms away.
And a few of my friends