Bird of the Week 2/24-2/28

common and underrated

This week’s bird is the: American Robin

This bird is a rerun from 2022

1) The American Robin is one of the most underrated birds out there. It’s large, charismatic and orange – what more could you want?! It’s inability to capture the love and admiration that accompanies other large orange birds is probably due to the fact that these birds are ridiculously common and widespread. There are more robins than people in the U.S. and Canada!

2) As you all probably know, this bird loves lawns and other human-occupied landscapes. But they also do just fine pretty much anywhere. These birds are very successful in a variety of human-constructed and non human-constructed environments.

3) In the winter, these birds often “squad up” (technical term) in order to compete with other species for access to fruit.

4) Despite being so common and generally well studied, some aspects of this bird’s life cycle remain relatively unknown. Robins generally migrate, but it’s unclear how common, how far and how much elevation plays a role in this behavior.

5) The scientific name of this bird is Turdus migratorius… Translation from latin: migratory turd.

Have a great week!