How to Tell the Difference Between Baby Robins and Baby Blue Jays

Robin Ecology
Contributed past Ornithologist Laura Erickson
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Anne Cook

• range
• habitat
• dangers/predators
• population
• conservation

Q. What is the range of the American robin?
A. The American robin is found over well-nigh of Due north America.

Q. What is the robin's habitat?
A. Robins tin be found in a wide range of habitats. You tin can find them in marshes, fields, forest borders, orchards, hedges, cut-over woods, gardens, urban, suburban, rural yards, and parks.

Q. What exercise robins eat?
A. Robins eat large quantities of worms and other invertebrates, berries and fruits.

Q.

What is the robin'south function in the ecosystem?

A.

Robins are omnivores. They serve as predators mostly of insects and worms, just also of small snakes and other small reptiles and amphibians. They are also fruit and drupe eaters. Sometimes they eat a berry in i place, and then fly away. When they poop, their droppings often contain the seeds of these berries, so the robins tin can "plant" them in new places.Robins are in plough eaten by foxes, bobcats, hawks, shrikes, and owls, and crows and bluish jays often take their eggs and babies. These are all natural predators. House cats, which are non natural predators considering they are fed by humans and maintained at an artificially loftier population, kill exceptionally large numbers of robins considering cats generally stalk creatures where robins practice their feeding on the ground.

Q.

What are a robin'southward enemies?

A.

Some of the natural predators named above are enemies of the robin, though some are also the robin's natural friends. Jays and crows consume baby robins during the nesting flavour, but when they aren't stalking a robin nest, they are very helpful to robins by alerting them of even greater dangers, and sometimes chasing away hawks and owls. Robins may also consider mockingbirds, waxwings, and other birds that compete for fruit to be enemies—they often chase these birds abroad. Humans who leave cats outdoors and/or use lawn pesticides are probably a robin'south greatest enemies, endangering both the robins and, especially, their newly-fledged babies.

Q.

What happens to robins when worms are in scarce supply?

A.

Robins can hands switch from eating a lot of worms to taking most entirely fruits, so when the ground starts getting cold in fall, robins change their nutrition. During droughts and other periods when worms are temporarily difficult to find, robins tin swallow fruit. If pesticides kill most of the worms in an area, robins may stop nesting in that area.

Q. How practice earthworms migrate?

A.

In areas where the basis freezes, one sign of leap is the appearance of the first earthworms of the flavor. This is called a "vertical migration." Earthworms, in the fall, migrate deeper into the world, below the frostline. Sometimes they ball upwardly to reduce moisture loss--equally many every bit a hundred worms existence bunched together--and thus spend the winter in inactivity. When spring comes and frost leaves the soil, the earthworms become migrants once again, tunneling upward. They announced at the surface, leaving the offset castings of the new seasons, as shortly as the average temperatures of the basis reaches nigh 36 degrees.

Q.

Where do robins spend the wintertime?

A.

Some robins retreat all the way to southern Texas and Florida, only others wintertime as far northward every bit they can find berries. Then robins have an enormous wintertime range

Q. What is the American robin'southward population status?

A.

The American robin is recorded in every state of the U.s.a. and every province of Canada on Convenance Bird Surveys. The total population is stable or increasing in most places on a large scale, but in some urban locations where cats and pesticides are common, robins appear to be declining locally.

Q. How tin in that location be more than robins today than when the colonists first came to America?

A.

When the colonists kickoff arrived, just about all of eastern America was heavily forested, and there were few copse at all in the prairie. Colonists cleared the forests, making information technology easier for robins to hunt on open ground, and also introduced more species of earthworms from Europe. In the prairie, they planted trees which robins utilize for nesting.

Q. How practise humans affect robin migration?

A.

When humans used the insecticide chosen DDT in the U.S., many robins died during spring migration as their bodies metabolized big amounts of body fat at in one case--DDT from the worms robins ate all wintertime was stored in their fat tissues and all released into their bloodstream at one time. This was a harmful effect, and now that Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane is banned in the US, is no longer a trouble for our robins. Humans also accept very positive effects on migration by planting the trees that provide food and shelter for migrants.

Q.

How tin we assist robins?

A.

Go on cats indoors, set out nest platforms for robins, stop using insecticides in lawn sprays and merely spot spray weed killers rather than spraying the entire lawn. Plant the kinds of drupe trees and bushes that provide abundant food for robins and the kinds of trees and shrubs that provide good comprehend for nesting. Ready out bird baths and prepare out robin feeders.

Q.

How can nosotros make a robin feeder?

A.

Robins never visit bird feeders for seed, considering they simply don't eat seeds. But some robins exercise learn to visit feeders to take berries, chopped upwards apples, and mealworms. You lot can besides offer mealworms in plastic dishes or acrylic window feeders.

Q. What are the biggest dangers robins face up?

A. Most robins dice from cats, hawks, and other predators. They likewise perish from accidents such as flight into windows, getting hit by moving cars, existence electrocuted, getting infectious diseases, and being poisoned. Chemic insecticides can be very harmful to robins. If you use lawn sprays, be sure that they don't accept insecticides as well as weed-killing herbicides and fertilizers.

Q.

What are the biggest dangers facing robins?
A. Dangers facing robins include (from well-nigh unsafe to least):

• Cats, which are mainly ground hunters and kill many adult robins and even more fledgling robins every yr.
• Pesticides, especially insecticides, sprayed on lawns. The chemicals used in the United states of america and Canada break downward into non-toxic molecules far faster than Ddt did, but most are still highly toxic to robins for the fourth dimension that they work on insects. Adult robins hopping on a freshly-sprayed lawn become their breadbasket feathers coated, and and so if they incubate their eggs or babies, the toxins can be taken in, especially through nestling skin, to impale the babies. Pesticides also injure populations of earthworms, which can brand robins decline in areas where many people spray their lawns.
• Crows and jays, which consume robin babies. This is a significant problem where these species are kept at artificially high numbers in cities, but otherwise is offset by the help crows and jays give robins in alarm nearly other dangers.
• Hawks, shrikes, and owls, which impale and eat robins. These natural predators' numbers drib equally their food supply dwindles, then they are far less common than robins, and except in rare local situations only don't touch robin numbers whatsoever more than robins affect earthworm numbers!
• Snakes, which eat robin eggs in the areas where tree-climbing snakes live. These are uncommon natural predators, and don't injure robin populations.
• Communications towers kill a few migrating robins each year, but far fewer robins than neotropical migrants such as warblers, orioles, and other thrushes. Other accidents: bonking into windows, car strikes, and electrocution.
• Thorns, which sometimes go stuck on robin feathers. One bird bander once caught a robin with a large thorn stuck in its throat.

Q. What are good trees we tin plant that provide food for robins?
A. Choose species native to Due north America. Some summer berry trees include:

• Serviceberry
• Scarlet mulberry
• Wild plum
• Pin blood-red
• Chokecherry
• Blackberry
• Raspberry
• Thimbleberry
• Elderberry
• Grape

Autumn berries include:

• Dogwood
• Silverberry
• Winterberry
• Apple tree
• Mountain ash

Winter berries include:

• Bittersweet
• Hackberry
• Hawthorn
• Red cedar
• Crabapple
• Highbush cranberry

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Source: https://journeynorth.org/tm/robin/facts_ecology.html

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