He rocks in the treetops all day long, rocking and bopping and singing his song.  Does it sound like tweedlydeedlydeet?  Not exactly, but it’s more variable than you’d expect.  Many times when I’ve heard an unfamiliar bird call or seen a bird flying in some strange way, it turned out to just be another american robin.  Bitches should be called migratory thrushes; they are not real robins.  But they are ridiculously successful animals in North America.  I wonder if blue sky posts can embed in wordpress ok.

actually I think democrats should move 2 the right & just become republicans and republicans should become giant skeleton monsters and giant skeleton monsters should become giant skeleton monsters that pee wasps

— birdrightsactivist (@probirdrights.bsky.social) November 7, 2024 at 11:05 AM

Anyway, american robins have the worst fucken theme song ever.  But they are respectable beasts.  I like the white ring around their eyes, helps them stand out from the dark hood, looks expressive.  The yellow beak and feet.  The red breast, very cool.  Give them a hand.  Yes, the song they sing around March 1st through most of the year, that sounds like a horror movie soundtrack, and one time my home boy Clark heard one singing it at three AM, but you gotta respect the hustle.

Sometimes I see about a dozen of them in a flock.  I think they’re more likely to posse up during migrations, but I’m no expert.  My dad said he used to see flocks more like a hundred, back when he was a youth, and remembered particularly watching them get drunk on rotten fruit.  The sixties, maaan.

Our robins get worms.  Not those ones.  Probably those ones too, but they eat mad worms.  I’ve heard invasive European earthworms are an ecosystem-crushing omnipresent disaster in the USA.  But I wonder, is their presence part of why migratory thrushes are so successful?  American robins and crows love the hell out of those things.  It’s every day.  Early birding.  Early worming.  Rise and shine, and by shine, I mean jerk a stretchy pink-grey freak out of a lawn and eat it.

USian robins are a bit smaller and much more graceful than USian crows.  The crows have a shambolic walk, and can only comfortably go faster by switching to a hop.  Robins run so smoothly their body doesn’t move up and down at all – just legs furiously wheeling beneath them, like Shaggy and Scoob.  I’ve dubbed it “the robin run,” but it’s not too unusual of a small bird gait.  It’s the crows that are especially maladroit.

Where do they migrate to?  They migrate, but they’re here all year.  But sometimes they do look like they’re going somewhere.  My guess is that in winter I’m seeing alaskans and canadians, and in summer i’m seeing guys that winter in california.  I don’t know.  They get around, like so many beach’d boys.  I’m getting bugged flying up and down the same old strip, I gotta find a new place where the birds are hip.

Why did I ever listen to the oldies station as a youth?  Big mistake.  This article is over, man!

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