By Bob Dolgan

The car ride from home to our daughters’ school passes through some fairly nondescript North Side neighborhoods. Avian life is typically minimal, aside from a few pigeons and starlings. A red-headed woodpecker in a pocket park a couple years ago was a stunning exception.

On a warmer March day recently, I was on the way to afternoon dismissal and saw an American robin on a power line right over the street. Then when I arrived at the kids’ school, there were two robins in a small grassy patch. A few signs of spring, I thought to myself—bright spots on a wintry day.

But were these harbingers of spring? I’ve been quick, probably too quick, to correct people in the past when they cite robins’ return as a sign of spring. “Robins are here all year round,” I’d say.

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Just how many robins do winter in northern Illinois? Bob Fisher, former President of Illinois Ornithological Society, has been birding in some winter robin hotspots for decades. On a winter day at places like Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve near Lemont, it’s common to see a few dozen to more than 100. I know this from personal experience at the Lisle-Arboretum Christmas Bird Count. I’ll let Bob take it from here.

“If you’re at Waterfall Glen, particularly on the west side of Sawmill Creek, there are some open areas there where the preserve borders the fence of Argonne [National Laboratory]. On a winter afternoon, maybe a half-hour before dusk and standing in an open area, you will see fairly large groups of robins heading toward the [Des Plaines] River.

“You could count 100 or 200 robins heading toward the river. The theory was that they were roosting in the trees along the river because that would be a microclimate and it would be warmer. They’d be going for berries [in upland areas], buckthorn and amur honeysuckle.”

Bob points out robin counts of as many as 170 on dates in December, January and February.

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So what of the robins that show up in March on almost any grassy patch, when the weather is just mild enough to thaw the soil? Well, those are a different population of migratory robins, coming to Chicago from points south. The Waterfall Glen robins are probably showing up in March at points north. The American Bird Conservancy takes a closer look at these questions about robins here.

In this case, there’s some truth to the anecdote that robins are a harbinger of spring. And why not? They can be right there in the same category with crocuses, forsythia and daffodils, even if some robins are from around here and some may not be.

As Bob says, “It can be difficult to tell what’s what and who’s who.”

So as await the big waves of migrants this spring, maybe we should simply celebrate having these pleasant birds around—the common brick-red breasted thrushes of cities and towns, Turdus migratorius, the American robin.

Contact the author of this post at ouzelfan@gmail.com.

A bird for all seasons? Questions about springtime and the great American robin