Q I have seen thousands and thousands of robins this year swarming around Holiday Resort every evening. What is bringing them out in those numbers? What are they doing? There seemed to be an unusually large number of snow geese and Canada geese, too.
A Seeing robins this time of year is not extraordinary, according to Saye McNew, migratory game bird coordinator for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks in Emporia.
“It’s quite common,” she said. “They’re returning from farther south. They’ll stage here for a few months on their way back north.”
McNew speculated that conditions may have added to their traveling numbers.
“They may have had a really good hatch year this year,” she said. “It was pretty good weather.”
The robins, known as American robins, are likely to go as far north as southern Canada.
“Some of them will stay here; some of them will just go a few states north of us,” McNew said, adding, “We do winter quite a few robins” in the Emporia area.
The abundance of snow geese earlier this year also signaled the start of their journey north.
“We did a survey the week of Jan. 5 and we counted, oh, about 350,000 snow geese, but there’s probably more in the state than that,” she said. “They’ll be coming through all the way probably until April.”
She said that some “extra-warm” days during the past few weeks probably caused them to move a little earlier than usual.
“We’re seeing good numbers of migratory birds this year, and hopefully they’ll have a good nesting season and come back next year,” McNew said.
The presence of the robins, however, does not necessarily mean that spring is just around the corner.
“You always get hopeful when robins show up,” she said, “but there’s always that one last snowstorm.”