Harbinger of Spring

click on images for a closer look

 

Say hello to Turdus migratorius – the American Robin.  And state bird of our fair state (and Michigan and Connecticut too).   This songbird is known as a harbinger of spring and they've arrived for the breeding season and are showing-up on the trail cameras.  

They're active during daylight hours hopping around the grass in search of grubs and earthworms.  Males chirp a song that sounds sort of like:  cheerily cheerup.   American robins are one of the first birds to lay eggs in the spring with a clutch of three to five bright blue eggs at a time.  This bird is capable of rearing three broods in a single nesting season however less than half of all nests successfully produce young.  Only twenty-five percent of fledglings survive to November and only half of any given population survives to the following year.

A migrating member of the thrush family - its name is a consequence of the European robin and its reddish breast even though the two species are not closely related. 

If the conditions are favorable some American Robins spend the entirety of winter in their breeding range – something not observed here.  In the fall this bird is known to gorge on fruit.  If they get into a batch of rotting honeysuckle berries they sometimes become tipsy.