The first robin of the year sighting! Central Illinois.

[634-5789]

The bad part: 8 inches of snow, near white out conditions.

[SheltieLover]

1. Please feed it!

[634-5789]

4. Oh yeah. I have 2 feeders, 4 suet chambers, corn on the cob for the deer and squirrels and pellets f

[SheltieLover]

6. Awesome!!!

[Emile]

2. I hate to burst your happiness, but many robins

spend the winter here in northern Indiana. Not all of them go south during the winter.

[SheltieLover]

5. Never saw them in Chicago during winters

Interesting!

[634-5789]

8. In my 70 years...

I cannot recall robins around after September!

[Emile]

11. It might have something to do with global climate change, but I see them all winter

just not in great numbers. Google it, I think you'll be surprised.

[PortTack]

3. Wow ..thx for posting. Just west of you. We now have 6+ inches and still coming down

[634-5789]

9. Yeah, I need SPRING!

Hate the snow and shoveling, salting, etc. Getting too old but will not move South...so.... grin & bear it I guess!

[Backseat Driver]

13. I love being cozy indoors; make a pretty snack, open a

a wine bottle or make hot cocoa; find a good book or movie, and pull that soft sofa throw around you while the rain and/or frozen mixed stuff/snow comes down. Nice.........no need to move to the South!

[CrispyQ]

7. We used to make a wish on the first robin we saw after the first day of spring.

I love robins. They come to our bird baths in small flocks, but never eat any seed.

[rsdsharp]

10. That's a running joke in my family. I used to work for a radio station

where the owner sometimes recorded commercials. Oftentimes he’d ad lib the copy. The guy could easily have been a used car salesman. One day in early spring, I was sitting across from him, running the board in the production room as he was winging a spot.

He got this oily smile on his face and his opening line was, “Hey! I saw a robin the other day,” in the smarmiest voice you can imagine.

To this day, when my wife (who also worked there) or I see a robin, we say “Hey! I saw a robin the other day!”

[Backseat Driver]

12. I saw a good-sized group on the lawn in Central Ohio today.

A group usually comes in around here about the last week of January each year. This week on Tues there were small frozen crabapples on the backyard tree; on Wednesday, the tree was picked clean, and that was before the Wind Advisory of this new winter storm. Today, the group was picking around at the ground. They've probably found shelter in the dense shrubery since the snow melted. Today, there's a flood warning going off every half hour on the "wailer" NOAA radio for non-saturating rainfall of upwards of 2 inches with temps lowering from the upper 50s down to the lower 20s. That has probably sent the worms upward from their tunnels. I suspect those robins are feasting on worms, ants, beetles forced out of their tunnels by the rain...robins don't eat seeds, so be sure you leave out some chopped up fruit and/or some oily peanut butter on pinecones on the feeder platform for their high-temp energy metabolism. Some of these I expect have stayed around all winter, but many must be on their migratory spring journey.

[imaginary girl]

14. Many overwinter in the midwest

They often go unnoticed until spring because they have different feeding habits.

[ProfessorGAC]

15. We're Looking At 4" Up Here

We're 90-100 miles north of Bloomington.
East of you is going to be buried. I saw 12-14".
My wife was talking to her friend in the NW suburbs a bit ago. It's already dramatically slowed up there.
Maybe it will move through fast for all of us.
BTW: wind gusts have hit 40+ mph.

[djm5971]

16. I saw two

Today in Indianapolis outside my window.