The temperature climbed into the seventies on Tuesday, far and away the warmest February day ever recorded in this part of Michigan. Of course, Wednesday was bitterly cold, and Thursday only made it to the thirties, but this is still winter. The birds hereabouts have, however, decided to ignore the cold weather and proceed as if this were spring.
Robins, in particular, are in full spring mode. Another way to describe their behavior lately is cookoo for Cocoa Puffs. The robins that stuck around all winter did so in companionable packs, hanging out in groups with their feathers puffed up, on the ground feeding, or telling each other tales while they sat around in trees. That whole companionable dynamic? That was then.
Now, the robins, particularly the male ones, have issues. They have things to prove to each other. There are points they want to make, and the way they want to make them is aggressively and fast. The robins have the zoomies.
If one male lands in a robinless tree, it is highly likely that another male will attempt to chase it away. “Move!” the incomer will order. “I was here first!” the first one may unwisely protest. “Were you thinking of speaking?” the bossy one will ask. “Uh, no,” the first one will say, as it flies off.
Sometimes there isn’t any chat at all, and sometimes there’s no landing either. The brushoff happens in the air, at speed, and woe betide any human in the marauder’s path. It’s as if the human doesn’t even register with the boss bird. If the shortest distance between the bird and its quarry goes through you, the chaser does its best to follow that path.
You don’t know this is about to happen until the bird is upon you. Which is also when the bird notices your existence. A robin-on-a-mission executed what looked—from mere inches away—like a ninety-degree aerial turn one day this week, while the dog and I were out walking. I didn’t know robins could do that. The robin may not have known it either. I was glad the robin was able to make the turn, as it was coming in at eye level.
Sometimes they come in lower. More than once, I’ve been startled by a robin zooming right over Rascal’s leash while the dog was at one end of it and I was at the other. The behavior of robins when they believe it’s spring leads to my ducking at darting shadows, including when I’m in the house. Yesterday was tremendously windy, and whenever the sun came out, quick-moving shadows had me flinching while sitting at the kitchen table.
The flinching also happened when the movement was at ankle level, as chipmunks have the zoomies, too. And at waist level, as the red squirrels zoom along the deck railing. Robins on the muscle have made me twitchy.
Canada geese on the muscle make me grateful—grateful not to live right on Thurston Pond. Geese honk most of the time anyway. On sunny days at this time of year, they hardly pause for breath. Geese approaching the pond from the air call out, “Move it! Cuz here we come!” The geese already on the pond honk back, “Hah! You and whose army?” The incomers yell, “We are an army!” and land with as much splashing and carrying on as possible, whereupon all the geese set up a hullaballoo and any mallards in the vicinity mutter “Quackquackquack,” just to make themselves known.
On Sunday afternoon, we heard altogether different voices, those of the Dexter Community Band, playing on concert called, “Escape the Winter Blahs.” The pieces varied from “When the Saints Gp Marching In” through Schumann, a baseball-inspired Sousa march called “The National Game,” a euphonium solo, and “Bugler’s Holiday.” That last piece has always struck me as misnamed; a more accurate name might be “Buglers Working Very Hard and Double Tonguing as Fast as They Can.” The band played another selection after that one and then, for an encore, had the trio of trumpeters play the most challenging part of “Bugler’s Holiday” again, even faster.
There are memories that I have that exist as still photographs in my mind, images of particular moments in time. I received a new one this week, when I glanced at the sky over the pond as an egret wheeled. All I could see over the rooftops was one big white wing, lit by the sun against a background of clear sky and a cumulus cloud. Did other people see it, that cold, blustery morning? I hope so. It felt like a blessing.
1 March 2024