I didn’t get any photos because I was indoors riding the exercise bike. I noticed a commotion in the Chinese hackberry tree that inhabits the parking strip – since the exercise bike is on the second floor, I was looking straight across at it. We had robins. We had a lot of robins, I could see 4 or 5 at a time and there were more I couldn’t see, disturbing the branches and leaves, flying from branch to branch eating the hackberries, if that’s what those little black things are. Also one much smaller greyer bird, also apparently after the berries.
It rained off and on today, not very hard, and we had a lot of birds. I’ve noticed before that a gray, drizzly day (with a light rain, but not usually a heavy one) is often a day when we get a lot of birds in the yard. If they were on the grass or in the flower bed I’d say they were after worms but there are no worms in the hackberry tree.
Looking for a collective noun for robins (apparently a group of robins is a worm), I found a comment (from the British Trust for Ornithology or BTO) that robins are territorial and don’t flock, but that “severe winter weather pacifies their mood with individuals becoming much more congenial.” I wouldn’t call today’s weather “severe”, dismal would be more like it, but we certainly had many more robins together than I’m used to seeing. I like birds, but robins always seem kind of aggressive to me. They certainly were today.
