on robins

 The mere sight of an American robin isn’t the first sign of spring, although the Audubon here in Massachusetts gets calls all winter reporting errant and harbinger robins. Many individuals do over-winter, changing to a diet of berries instead of worms and moving deeper into the forest. But all the particulars change in the spring, and they become my backdrop – something so simple and clear and honest it’s always already happening before I realize it. I have moved into spring, already, and I stop in my tracks and realize the evening robins have brought me there.

Their plumage changes in the spring, like many birds. But it’s a bit subtler than the noticeable brightening and blackening of the goldfinch: the bill brightens to sunflower yellow and the red breast gets deeper and ruddier. They get a bit of flash, especially when combined with the two outer white patches visible on their tails as they streak away from lawns with their woodpecker-esque trumpeting. They wear white-ringed monocles, and their dapper gray backs and long thrush tails make them appear as though they’ve put on their morning suits, all three pieces with a cheeky red vest.

We see them now on lawns, pulling worms from wet earth. They seem to me always clumsily avoiding some kind of amusing mishap, because yes, they hop like most birds, but they also kind of run. They actually scamper about. I haven’t been able to find much research or basic information on songbirds who seem to run around, but it seems to me it makes sense for a larger songbird who spends a good deal of time on the ground. Hopping takes a heck of a lot more energy than speed-walking. Try it.

So T. migratorius is a sight for the eyes, but more profoundly he is a wake-up call for our inner ears. Their song is a somewhat clumsy, liquid four-part question, to me. You’ll see it written as ‘cheerio, cheerily, cheerio, cheerily.’ It is most definitely thrush – there is a depth and clarity to it, though nothing like its cousins the hermit or veery. It’s not long and impressive, like the operatic song sparrow, or multi-toned like the boreal thrushes. It’s not absolutely unmistakable like, say, the towhee (‘drink your tea!’), as the gray catbird can sound like a robin, perhaps after a bit of champagne. But nobody sings you into twilight like the robin. They are quintessentially crepuscular, singing loudest before dawn and after dusk. They’ll sing when almost all the light is gone from the sky, and it’s the cheeriest sound I know. It’s the activity gentle but bright enough to offer allowance that our own can stop. Someone has taken the reigns for the day, and off we can drift. 

Their evening song is taps, for me, but not the sort that brings tears. It’s the taps we sang at camp – “day is done, gone the sun…” Reverence with the corners of one’s lips turned up, no great heartbreak, just rest. And a bit of a chuckle, because they are pretty silly.