Birds of Nebraska: Newspaper Accounts, 1854-1923

Editor [possibly Miles Greenleaf]. March 18, 1923. Omaha Sunday World-Herald 58(25): 10-E. A bird editorial.

Robins in the Snow.

For some inexplicable reason - and all bird-reason is inexplicable to us - there have been more Robins and earlier this year than usual in this vicinity. As we have remarked, Robins are always with us, in sequestered jungle-spots of winter - but seldom have so many of them made their appearance in the residential and other open sections so early as this year.

When Thursday of last week came along, with its surprising quantity of snow, it was a very common thing for the amateur ornithologist to hear some layman bemoaning the sad fate of the Robins in such dire circumstances.

Prospect of Redbreast freezing was uppermost in laity's mind - and laity was very nobly tearful at the idea.

But God apparently constructed his wonderful Robins to meet such exigencies.

A Robin very seldom suffers seriously from the cold - he being much too tough a customer to bother about March weather - or the weather of any other month, for that matter. If he doesn't like it, he goes somewhere else. If he likes it - which he generally does - he ducks for the underbrush and lets nature take its course.

During and after Thursday's snowstorm it was interesting to see the Robins in the residential and park districts making the best of a bad bargain.

They were huddled cheerfully under rose bushes or other shrubbery, cheeping once in a while, and scratching around through the wet snow for their hidden grub, just like a parcel of hens. And in the wildwood they would be found mostly on the south exposures of grasses or weeds - like Cottontails, weathering it out.

Dear Robin Redbreast - staunchest and huskiest and humanest of all that God has sent us from his Bird Heaven - we thank Him and you, too, that we need not bother over your welfare!

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