Les MacPherson, The StarPhoenix
Published: Saturday, April 26, 2008
What a strange week this has been with the freak snow and the stubborn cold and the invasion of Saskatoon by giant flocks of robins.
To see so many robins was almost creepy, like those early scenes in The Birds, just before the terrible peckings. The robins, too, seemed troubled, and for good reason. They fly south in the fall to avoid exactly this kind of weather. Now here they were, freezing their little red breasts off and wondering why their travel agent wasn't returning their calls.
No one did a census, but I suspect we had more robins in Saskatoon this week than people. They were all over. Reports came from every quadrant of the city of yards taken over by robins. From the University of Saskatchewan campus came grim tales of robin window-strike fatalities collected by the bucketful. The collective noun for dead robins, incidentally, is a bucketful.
On our street, there were so many robins hopping around that drivers had to slow down so as not to run them over. It was like driving among chickens in a farmyard, except if you run over a robin, you don't get a chicken dinner.
Our yard was like robin invasion headquarters. I counted more than 50 on the lawn and in the trees. They seemed to blow in with the foul weather. One day, there were none, the next day, they were the dominant species. If they went all Alfred Hitchcock on us, we would be in trouble. As it was, marauding neighbourhood cats were staying out of sight for fear of being swarmed.
Fortunately, the robins were not aggressive. Cold and hungry is what they were. Robins normally are long gone by the time we get snow and they don't come back until it's gone. This late spring snowstorm caught them by totally surprise. They didn't even pack a sweater.
Along with the cold comes hunger. Robins normally subsist on bugs, worms and berries. All three were in short supply last week. With the ground still frozen solid and covered in snow, bugs and worms were not yet in season. As for berries, we had nothing but the ornamental crabapples still dangling in the trees from last summer. They last as long as they do because nothing will eat them. Ornamental crabapples are perhaps the nastiest of fruits. I've sampled them. Once you gnaw through the Kevlar-like skin, the rock-hard contents are so incredibly sour that the slightest taste induces painful facial cramps.
Remember the movie Alien, when the creature's dripping, acidic blood dissolved holes through successive decks of the spaceship Nostromo? I'd have been happy to rinse my mouth with that stuff after tasting an ornamental crabapple.
Most years, the ornamental crabs finally drop off the trees the following spring, to be mulched up by the mower. That's why our lawn is so thin. It's partially dissolved by acidic crabapple mulch. This year the lawn will do better because there are no crabapples left to drop off. The trees have been totally denuded of their nasty, bitter fruit by starving robins. What this was doing to their stomachs, I could only imagine. I'd have put out some Rolaids for the poor things if I'd had any.
Once they'd devoured the last of the inedible crabapples, the robins were reduced to scratching snow from the ground with their scrawny little feet in a desperate search for any little particle of food. The only thing missing was Sally Struthers imploring viewers to send money. Too bad, because I'd have written a cheque right there.
Unable to help through a charitable donation, I looked around instead for something to feed the robins. But what? I had no worms to offer them. Not since my wife forbade me from ever again keeping live bait in the fridge. When she opened the little tub she was expecting leftover tortellini, apparently.
The best I could do was to scatter for the robins some diced up fruit. It was either that or Kraft miniature marshmallows. These seemed about the right size, but they were a little stale. The one thing these robins didn't need was stale miniature marshmallows stuck on their beaks. Wildlife authorities would have come after me. As it so happened, the fruit was enough. The birds ate it almost as fast as I could dice it, stems, skin, seeds and all. They even ate the little fruit stickers.
Quite a few people I know have been feeding the robins. The idea is to sustain them until the ground finally thaws and they can find worms to eat.
Worms are wishing we'd stay out of it.
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