Robins in 2008 Winter

Looking for Robins in 2008
Robins and more robins! But it was the middle of last winter, Plato. I have received calls from all over Niagara about the sightings of large numbers of robins in late January and February. I had an article written but my computer crashed and I lost it. So this is a second try.
From Jerry at the Leisureplex where he sighted fifty or so to Ross Bearss on the Ridge Road - a hundred! I went to the Bearss’s home and on either end of their house are berry trees. There was still dried up fruit on the branches, On this relatively warm day the host of robins were eating the berries. Many of you know the story. The warming sun heated up the juice in each exposed berry and fermentation caused alcohol to be formed. These robins were having a party! They whizzed around often in an erratic way. Over half of Ross’s visiting robins had flown when I arrived but I confirmed his call. Invitations calls from Chippawa and Niagara Falls I did not follow up but I believe the callers. Wintering robins? A few tell me that could be the case. However, such large groups at one time - ten, twenty. fifty and even 100 means to me that they have come north as a group this early. Food? One caller said to me, “They only eat worms.” Not so. Robins like many songbirds will adjust their diet according to the availability of winter food. Drop me a line if you have any large robin sightings. Observe what they are eating. You may surprised.
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Yes, I’ve been reminiscing at the end of this winter month. Times are slow when you’re cooped inside. What to do? I was cleaning up three big boxes of family records. There in the middle of one of these mass of papers et al was one of my long Review nature articles of years ago. I had placed five copies of the story entitled, I Finally Saw the Elusive Pileated Woodpecker. There it was - my drawing of the giant woodpecker at the bottom of the piece. Wrong box, yes, but then memories flooded back. Let me share in 2005 part of that memory from that old article. “The day was cold and cloudy. Not long into the hike in Reinstein’s Woods, a private entity in Erie County, N.Y. we heard the unmistakable sound “Cuk! Cuk! Cuk!” of a pileated woodpecker. Bert Miller Nature Club naturalists, Rob Eberly and Tim Seburn, have far better eyesight than I do. They were able to see a male pileated back in the woods. Finally I saw the flash of red of the bird’s head crest. What a thrill for this guy! This woodpecker had red under its throat. “That’s an identifying mark of a male pileated,” said Tim. We next visited Stiglemeyer Public Patk that abuts Reinsteins. There are boardwalks that lead into a partial wetlands. We saw cardinals, and almost tame chickadees and white throated nuthatches. The tapping! Have you heard the tapping of local woodpeckers? Magnify them many times and you know you have a pileated. Rob pointed to a large beech tree and there were the unmistakable pile of wood chips at the base of the tree. Rob estimated the excavation high in the beech as about 2 1/2 feet long, six inches wide and 5 inches deep. The largest of our woodpeckers in their pursuit of carpenter ants had made the huge beech tree cavity.”
Writer’s Note: Back up the trail we saw a female pileated perched high on the limb of a beech tree. We zeroed in with our bird glasses. This was better sighting than the first time. Enjoy bird watching in 2008. Join a nature club - Peninsula Field Naturalists, Niagara Falls Nature Club or the Bert Miller Nature Club. Great ‘birders’ in those organizations.