Some Summer Birds Stay Behind in Winter.

The summer birds are gone: the warblers, fly catchers, orioles and goldfinches have all flown away along with most of the ducks. We do have some remainders, though. During the last one hundred years, the cardinals and robins have learned to stay here in the upper Midwest and endure the harsh winters. So, they stay and make me pay attention to them during my morning walks.

We had a strong frost this am but a few mallards float defiantly in the bright sunlight on the ponds that I frequent .Canada geese waddle around on land, determined to pass the winter with us, too. There is not an abundance of food but somehow these winter residents eake out a living.

Yes, the crows are crowing and the Blue Jays seem always to be scolding. The chickadees flutter around close to me and hang on the bark on the sides of trees.

The snow birds (Juncos) haven't arrived yet but soon flocks of them will liven up the scrub bushes and barren paths.

Summer is dying and the bushes are losing more leaves with every breeze. But, the birds are still here. And, so I will get up in the morning and see what they are up to.

 

The White Robin of the Ozarks.

I once saw a white robin.  Now, I know that this might be hard for you to believe but I know what I saw.

There he was (she?) hopping around with his head cocked to one side, stopping every few feet to stare into the short grass of my front lawn in the Missouri Ozarks on a late autumn morning. I couldn't believe my eyes: He was cream colored with a few streaks of light brown here and there on his wing feathers.

I phoned a well-respected local birder with the news. He didn't take it too well and thought I was mistaking a robin for a mourning dove. He came over later that day and verified the sighting: The white robin was still acting like a robin.

It was the behavior of the bird that caught my eye. If it looks like a robin, if it hops and searches the ground like a robin, if it has the form of a robin, it's probably a robin --no matter its color.

In the wild, female cardinals don't look red at all. They are a drab green and brown and don't reveal the red color of a cardinal until they take flight and flash the underside of their wings. Red-bellied woodpeckers don't have red bellies and the yellow-bellied sap sucker's ventral area doesn't look very yellow to me. Let's not even talk about a titmouse.

Whether my morning robin was a rare color variation or a true albino, I'll never know for sure.  But, the behavior of my ghost-like morning robin, reminds me that you can't always judge a book by its cover, nor a bird by its color: By their behaviors, you shall know them.