Date: 03/31/2019

Number: 3

I got up this morning and sat in my car at 5:15am EDT. It was 54 degrees. Oh wait, celsius is expected more these days. It was 12.2 degrees Celsius. There was a warm air mass over NY with an approaching cold front. This was creating a window of opportunity for migrants to pass through. The radars in the past several hours were showing tremendous amount of clutter across central NY. It was the signature of migrating birds. I started to record the sequence of events before sunrise. I could hear ducks, geese, and killdeer overhead. This will be my third and final confirmation of singing robins. We still have lots of entrenched snow across Dolgeville. The yards that are open, are the ones that get a lot of sun.

At 5:27 the robins came alive with whinny calls. At 5:29 mild singing began. Finally, at 5:41, full blown singing spread across the listening area. It was pitch dark out. I began to ride my bicycle around to see what was going on. There was singing everywhere, but it seemed concentrated in the core of the village. I video recorded three robins during this process. They are singing vibrantly in the dark. Songs are lasting over three minutes per episode. This is followed by peeks and whinny calls, then they sing again. I posted two videos of them on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/matthew.steere.3/videos/2633728106678073/
https://www.facebook.com/matthew.steere.3/videos/2633742780009939/

When I got home, at 6:45, two robins darted right beside me peeking all the way. One was chasing the other. They went into my neighbors spruce tree and immediately dueled by whisper singing at each other. I leave with a photo of my backyard. It shows how much snow is left. In the background Mr. robin is perched on the right corner of my neighbor's roof. He was whinny calling, singing, and generally being aggressive about everything. He even whinny called more when my camera flashed.

The cold front hit at 8:08. I'm now content with my robin singing observations for the year. I'm just trying to confirm and show the progress of the robin singing for my area. The trials here should help with more accurate reporting in the future. Where are the rest of my central New Yorkers? Are Joel and I the only ones trying here?

Dolgeville, NY

Latitude: 43.1 Longitude: -74.8

Observed by: Matthew
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