Psychic Animals - Migrant Birds

Well we all know that our Alberta groundhog “Billie Balzac” has won this year’s weather competition when he saw his shadow on February 2^nd, 2011, and ran for cover, thus predicting 6 weeks longer of snowy winter.  This trumps the predictions from the more famous groundhogs, like Wiarton Willie from Wiarton, Ontario, Nova Scotia's Shubenacadie Sam, and Punxsutawney Phil in Pennsylvania who all failed to see their shadows and so got it completely wrong.  Now Manitoba does not have groundhogs and therefore resorts to using a stuffed animal who saw his shadow and Toronto who has outsourced to Herman, a Vancouver Island marmot who also got it wrong this year when he didn’t see his shadows.

Now, this afternoon, I have just seen upwards to a dozen Robin’s and few European Starling’s feeding in the Crab-Apple tree in my garden.  They have come to join my regular visitors of Sparrows, Chickadees and Blue Jay’s. They are programmed by a different internal circuit and respond to increasing length of daylight to initiate their migration.  Now all be it that we are oblivious to whether in fact the days are any longer or shorter due to the overcast weather we have had here, we must believe that seen as these robins that have just traveled past some of the best of southern golf courses and weather to get here, that they are now forecasting that spring might be right around the corner.  This certainly gives me confidence that our local weatherman might in fact be correct that by the end of the coming week we will again be in warmer and sunnier conditions.  We definitely deserve it by this stage.

And remember that if you are feeding the birds in your gardens, then now is a good time to include food for the migrating robins.  Hoping that we will all experience warmer weather soon.