WHAT DOES ONE FEED ROBINS?

You might try to find some of those suet balls which are designed to be hung from trees, for the delectation of our avian friends--give 'em a little fat to ward off the chill . . .

These sound like some good ideas:
Link to Feeding Robins

We have suet feeders all about and Ive tried tying some to horizontal boards, no luck.. The table scraps and cheese seems good to try. Ill heave out some emergency rations of raisins and see what happens. I hope we dont attract the deer.

For some dumass reason in theor bio clock, the robins just appeared ab out two weeks ago and we hadnt noticed them till weve seen them fly around some hawthorne trees and they have cleaned out the tiny crab apples. So the fruit idea seems right .

This is sooo strange. In early February, the robins were hanging around, picking at the strawberry crop, and ruining quite a bit of it. Normally, the robins fly north when the strawberries are still green. They pass thru around mid February. It was figured, that because of the cold weather, they hung around Florida a bit longer than usual.

Wow! I was just thinking about this awhile ago. We've seen a few robins around the past week and I was beginning to wonder what I should feed them. I've been throwing bread out to the birds lately and since I know that robins are meat eaters, I was worried about them.

Phoenix
Thanks so much for the site. I printed up the list of things they will eat and am very happy now that I can help these little guys along :-)

A few years ago we had a late spring blizzard that covered everything - after the robins had arrived. I called a local nature centre to ask what to feed them 'cause we had 3 feet of snow on the ground. Their advice, chopped apples and oranges.

Thanks Mckenzie. I'll add that to my list.

SAme thing this year. Weve got a whole crew of robins that showed up last week and we have a 6-*" snowfall to deal with. The raisins on a snow free area seems to work niocely and today Im going up to the fish store to get a block of frozen meal worms. MAybe thatll get their appetites up.

DAmn birds, no sense of timing
Weve had a few robins all winter. I hope they communicate to their newly arrived cousins about survival skills in a pre vernal world.

Yeh, and I've seen a Cotoneaster parneyii tree chock full of robins, for the berries.

Ha, just noticed that I answered a five year old post by farmer..

Is that the cotoneaster with the little red berries? I see our little crabapples get totally hoovered at this time of year. I think the robins have a network of these trees that they hit on their early returns..

Today, my wife refilled the raisin thing twice . Its mostly robins and a coupla, what appear to be some kind of waxwing species.

Yes. I may have misspoken about it as a tree, as they don't get very tall, but can be maintained in tree form.


Adding, that was up in Humboldt County... when I hadn't seen a robin for years and years and years until I moved there and that tree was across the street from my house.

we have never had any birdfeeders , yet get plenty of birds of all kinds : cardinals, chickadees , robins , blue jays ... ...
we have two 40 year old spruce trees on our property and many birds find their food in there - there are a few more spruce trees in the neighbourhood also being visited by the birds .
there is also a family of fat rabbits living under the trees - temperatures of 30 below C doesn't seem to reduce their fertility .
i wonder if some birds eat rabbit droppings - i've noticed that many birds pick rather carefully over anything on the lawn and flowerbeds ?
hbg

I googled "feeding robins" and got 2.5 million hits.

Got to be some good tips there.

2.5 million hits. What a grand way to waste a week or more. SOrt of like reading spendi posts.

and here I thought that they ate worms

Brit Robin likes a few seeds...

Feeding them anything is anti-evolutionary. It just enables weaker ones to survive and breed more weaker ones. You silly sod.

I didn't think you would need me to explain a simple thing like that to you effemm. Is your virtuous nature getting the better of you?

with that spendupidity , we should never have developed insulin, anticoagulants, pacemakers or eyeglasses either. Just letem all die before they can breed these weaknesses into the genepool.

I would have thought your position demanded that. I never said don't feed the robbins. I just can't understand why a professed evolution fanatic would feed them unless he wishes to screw robbins up.

They are discussing legislation here to prevent dog "lovers" from screwing dogs up by pampering them.

Feeding the robins and pampering dogs are both sadistic activities where the ego wishes to alter its surroundings more than necessary. Expressions of control freakery.