Wintering Flocks of Robins

     This is March 11, 2015, and the weather in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania has finally warmed to more seasonal temperatures day and night.  Time now to start looking for migrating, north-bound flocks of American robins in this area.  But I regularly saw three flocks of wintering robins close to home in New Holland in this county this past winter, in spite of the cold wind and snow we've had, though, no doubt, there have been other groups of robins that wintered here.  The robins were always handsome, and interesting to see in their congregations in the middle of winter.  And each group of robins was accompanied by a few starlings and a handful of cedar waxwings, both of which also eat berries in winter. 
     Most people think robins go south for the winter and come north in March, but I suspect more robins winter here than we realize.  I don't think I ever saw so many wintering American robins in my life as I did in the winter of 2014-2015.  And during that harshest of seasons, they mostly eat berries by day and spend nights sheltering in half-grown coniferous trees or thickets of shrubbery that block cold, winter winds.
     I found one group of over a hundred robins wintering in the east end of the borough of New Holland.  I saw birds of this gathering one warmer winter afternoon running and stopping, running and stopping on a field where they probably were searching for earthworms and other invertebrates.  One snowy day, I spotted what were probably the same birds nearby in a group of three, small crab apple trees and on the snow under the trees where they were eating the small, red fruits of those trees and fruit that fell below those trees.  The robins were quite the beautiful crowd on the snow while eating the berries.  And on another sunny, warmer day, I saw what I took to be the same robins moving across an extensive lawn, again to eat invertebrates.        
      Another flock of nearly a hundred American robins seemed to be "stationed" in a 20-acre, half-grown stand of red juniper trees, with a few American holly trees mixed in, in farmland about a mile south of New Holland.  Hollies have red berries that robins eat and the junipers have berry-like, pale-blue cones that robins ingest as well.  The robins there were eating the holly berries and juniper cones, but were also going to a nearby field on warmer afternoons where they ran and stopped, ran and stopped in their quest for invertebrates.  Almost without doubt, those robins spent winter nights in the wind-breaking junipers.
     The third gathering of wintering robins was in farmland with hedgerows and thickets a few miles northwest of New Holland.  That group of close to a hundred birds often consumed the red fruits from a large crab apple tree near a road.  Sometimes the snow cover under that tree was crowded with feeding robins.  They were a striking, exciting sight.
     Next winter, or a succeeding one, watch for wintering American robins.  They are more prevalent in the north than most people realize.  And the wintering robins' numbers are bolstered in March by north-bound relatives that wintered farther south.  By the end of March, male robins are singing to establish nesting territories and attract mates to raise young.