First Robin Spotted, It Must Be Spring

Last night I got back from a weekend trip with my sister to the Sunshine Coast (blog entry on the trip will be coming up as soon as I can get through all the photographs) and this morning it’s started raining again. The Big Guy mentioned that it actually snowed a little over the weekend. While it was not exactly brilliantly sunny, the weather was good enough over the weekend to make the trip highly enjoyable.


As I said, it’s started raining again this morning and as I was looking out the kitchen window at the dripping trees I saw our first American Robin (Turdus migratorius) of the year.

So it must be spring!

He was up in one of our neighbour’s trees, looking around for breakfast. Then he flew over into the eavestrough and had a few sips of water before taking off again.

I expect there will soon be lots of Robins returning from wherever they migrate to from here in the winter. According to the migratory maps, Robins do winter locally but in our neighbourhood I don’t see them for 2 or 3 months in the winter.

When the lawn is wet from morning dew or after a rain shower, they will come to our yard in groups of five or more to hop around the lawn hunting for earthworms. They look for goodies to eat by tilting their heads from side to side to get a good look at the ground with one eye or the other; it looks like they’re listening!