Backyard American Robins Living The Good Life
My Nature Journal Summary
Date | September 13, 2022 |
Time | 12:50PM EDT |
Temperature | 81ยฐF / 27ยฐC |
Weather | Sunny with passing clouds |
Wind | 5mph, 330ยฐ NNW to SSE |
Humidity | 35% |
Habitat | Suburban backyard including grass, fallen leaves, and English Ivy |
Animals Encountered | American Robin (Turdus migratorius) |
My Nature Journal Photos
American Robin (Turdus migratorius)
I glanced out my backdoor around lunchtime today and spotted about eight American Robins living the good life in my backyard.
American Robins are common in my area, and my backyard usually sports several of these birds at any given time. Most often, they bounce across the grass, dig into the soil, and pull earthworms from their subterranean homes.
But today, the birds’ body language and position caught my attention. Instead of bounding around like usual, every bird was motionless. Each bird was also crouched down in a posture I’ve not seen before. Most fanned their wings out against the ground and their feathers appeared ruffled and fluffed up.
At first, I wondered if perhaps a hawk just flew over the yard and the robins hunkered down in hopes of being ignored. But then I realized this was unlikely. Whenever I’ve been privileged enough to see a hawk swooping over my backyard flock, the robins fast-wing it to shelter as quickly as they possibly can. They don’t hang out in the open, but break for the cover of the trees and bushes that dot my yard.
These robins may have behaved this way for two possible reasons: anting and sunbathing.
Anting behavior in birds
The first possibility is that the robins were “anting”.
Some birds use ants to drive off feather mites. These creatures, along with other parasites, cling to the birds’ feathers and irritate their skin. The birds drape themselves over ant hills, spread their wings, and fluff out their feathers. Angry antsโunderstandably annoyed by large feathered vertebrates threatening their nestsโ come swarming out and attack.
Many ant species fight by spraying threats with acidic secretions, especially formic acid. Some ants enhance the effect of the sprayed acid by first biting with their sharp mandibles.
During an anting session, the ants crawl under and through a bird’s feathers. They spray their acidic secretions with wild abandon. These noxious secretions then drive off feather mites and other parasites, which relieves the birds of the irritation the parasites cause.
It’s also possible that the ants attack feather mites directly, as ants are predators, but I’ve not seen any confirmation of this behavior in my research. Anting remains a relatively unknown bird behavior with lots more for scientists to discover.
Sunbathing behavior in birds
The second possibility for these robins’ strange behavior is that they were simply sunbathing.
Lots of bird species enjoy sunbathing, probably for many of the same reasons that humans do.
The sun dries their feathers when birds get wet, which can be important to a bird’s health. Even birds that evolved to dive into water fly better when their wings are dry. Also, birds can catch chills or develop infections or skin issues in prolonged damp conditions, just like humans can. And it’s possible that the ultraviolet portion of sunlight may kill off pathogens also, so sunbathing may help birds avoid infections.
I did not have the opportunity to investigate whether my robins were anting or just sunbathing. Ants certainly inhabit my backyard but I don’t think the spots the birds were resting on were particularly close to ant hills, so I think they were just sunbathing. But ants travel far distances and defend large territories so anting isn’t out of the question.
To really know for sure what drove the robins’ behavior, I would have had to go outside and approach the birds to see if I could spot ants crawling on them. This would have scared the birds off and I didn’t want to do this.
If the robins were anting, I wanted them to get rid of their itchy, irritating parasites. And if they were just sunbathing…. well, robins deserve to live the good life in the sun every once in a while too.