One man counted 150 in his yard one day, gorging on cedar berries. The sky is black with them. In summer, robins eat worms, grubs, and other insects. In winter, those that remain up North switch to berries and sometimes suet from birdfeeders. Their diet includes the fruit of hawthorn, buckthorn, mountain ash, holly, wild grapes, cedar, crabapple, sumac and multiflora rose.
Experienced birders say robins have long been more common in winter than most people think.
But there always are overwintering robins here. It does appear that there are more than usual this year, said Lee, who lives near Schenectady. In the 1998 Audubon Christmas Bird Count, Schenectady County birders reported nearly 2,600 robins, more than any year since the local club started doing the annual one-day count 70 years ago, Lee said. But a one-day count can be misleading. About eight winters ago, Guthrie visited a dense stand of pines near the Hudson River and counted about 100,000 robins flying in to roost.