Cold-snap!
What Can the Robins Find to Eat?
Elizabeth Howard
April
7, 2007
Robins returned to our Vermont town only one week ago. This week the cold
snap hit. Temperatures dropped to 15°F at night. Brrrr! The ground
was covered with snow. What would the robins eat? Where would they go?
We took a drive to look for robins. We saw robins flying in and out of a grove of sumac trees. We stopped to watch. The robins were stripping the dry sumac fruits with their beaks, hungrily gobbling it down. More robins were on the ground, picking up the falling fruit.
We came back to the same tree a day later. The robins were gone. They had "emptied" the tree and nothing was left to eat!
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This
robin on the side of the road was the first one we noticed. |
Then
we found a sumac tree with more than 30 robins! |
Can
you find the nine robins in this picture? The colors of robins
and sumac blend so well
that the robins are hard to see. |
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Do
you see
how the robin stands on the fruit as it eats? Sumac
is an emergency food for wildlife. It's available in the spring
only because nobody ate it during the winter.
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| Do
you see the stripped sumac frond behind
the robin? He ate it! |
Here's
the
only female among hundreds of males. Click photo to see the
male in the background. How are their colors different? |
Despite
the cold snap, robins
are feeding,
flying and resting. They were glad to find the sumac! |
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