A Flock(?) of Robins

When dark days bring little miracles

I began writing here in order to address stress in American cities. I soon realized I should address stress in all cities because things like climate change, air pollution, guns, war, etc. now affect people worldwide, both in cities and out. Gradually I also realized I wanted to write about other things such as wonderful teachers I was lucky enough to encounter growing up, or how music, musicians, certain writers, and my love of animals and plants have been so central to my life.

But I kept finding myself feeling it necessary to first cover today’s conflicts, suffering, and craziness going on just about everywhere. To be more exact I felt compelled to do this even though it often depressed and exhausted me. I began to resent not having time to write about the things I love. I told myself there was no need because of the many writers covering Trump, Putin, and the rest of the tyrant club, and lots of great reporting on other bad things like Maga extremists, antisemitism, and threats to democracy. I decided I’d been kidding myself in thinking I could add much to all the quality stuff already out there, and after all, people have only so much time to read.

So I got more and more conflicted and depressed.

While thinking about all that this week, I was looking out the window at our garden that I love and that often helps save me from pretty dark moods, when suddenly I saw a flock of robins! (Sadly I couldn’t get a photo before they whooshed away, which is why you see only single robins in the photos here, but these are lovely, aren’t they?)

We often have one or two robins here, but not usually on a cloudy and cold day in February. Yet out of nowhere came this flame-colored thing jetting across the gray sky from one of our tall trees to another, then another ball of red/orange in the birdbath, three more in various trees, and a few flying to the roof and then back to the trees. More robins together than I’ve ever seen. Our cat Daisy was amazed too, and completely caught up in the glowing feathered things lighting up the sky.

I’ve never seen such a beautiful bunch of birds in our garden, even though we have many birds in sets of one to four. Our mostly-year-round residents include two cardinals and sometimes their children; a couple of mockingbirds, two blue jays; and some sparrows, finches, and chickadees. We get the occasional woodpecker, and today along with the robins I saw another wonder: a brown bird a little smaller than a robin, with a bright red head and chest and a blazing red spot on his tail as if someone had just dropped some red nail polish right there. He was stunning to see as he stopped for a drink at the bird bath.

I should say here that not only had I recently been considering writing less about depressing stuff, but I’d been thinking about ending the blog altogether. (A number of reasons besides what I mentioned above caused this, including the feeling I think many people writing blogs and newsletters have, of being too tiny a drop in the bucket to matter.) Yet the thought of not writing was also depressing. But this glorious rush of beautiful birds through the garden lifted my spirits just enough to help me come up with the notion that if I could write about things like this more often, and other things that inspire me (with that occasional political article I feel a compulsion to write), then I’d like to keep going.

That plan hopefully will make me somewhat calmer while also allowing some time to return to writing about ways to de-stress our cities, such as being able to have or at least see a garden every day, even in the city.

Growing up I enjoyed a beautiful book in our house called “An Exaltation of Larks,” illustrated with groups of different birds along with their names as a group. I tried to find it online because I wasn’t sure robins came in “flocks” and I wanted to check. I found several books with that name but most were novels except for one by James Lipton, which must be the one we had. (I was delighted to also see two other similar books, one called “A Murmuration of Starlings,” and another, “A Charm of Goldfinches.”) Online I couldn’t look inside the books for more names so I googled “flock of robins.” Someone did use the term so I figured that is the word for robin groups. On that page, “FeederWatch” on Cornell’s website, I found this:

As with many birds, the wintering range of American Robins is affected by weather and natural food supply, but as long as food is available, these birds are able to withstand quite severe cold. American Robins do migrate, but their year-round range covers the continental United States and into Southern Canada.

In winter robins form nomadic flocks, which can range in size from 50 birds in the north to thousands in the south. Sometimes the flocks break up in the day while foraging and then gather up again at night to roost in trees. To attract robins, try serving dried or fresh fruit and providing a source of water.

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Notes:

https://feederwatch.org/learn/feeding-birds-faqs/theres-a-flock-of-american-robins-in-my-yard-dont-these-birds-migrate-south-for-the-winter/#:~:text=In%20winter%20robins%20form%20nomadic,night%20to%20roost%20in%20trees.