American Robin

American Robin singing
American Robin perched

American Robins have always fascinated me. About how they sing their lovely song or how they catch worms. We even have robins nest in our yard. The pictures above were hard to take because they were males. Males are usually more timid then the females. So, that makes the pictures so hard to take. In fact, I think robins are our most common bird, so why do we ignore them so much? Because they are so common? I don't think we should. We need to stop putting poison on our lawns. When we put poison in our yards the worms eat the poison and the robins eat the worms. The robin then dies and a whole generation of birds is lost. Even when we put fertilizer in our lawns it can make the robins sick. Which a bird lover would not want. Why should you do this? Because, robins control our pest problems, because robins bring children into nature, because robins help our lawns!

Now that I have you interested in robins I will tell you how to provide food, water, shelter and a place to breed. Which is all a robin needs. ***note: when you help robins you help bluebirds too***

First make your lawn a little bigger if you can and provide a birdbath with a drip system. Then provide shelter like trees and shrubs. And your done, that's all you have to do! Isn't that easy. Why then don't a lot of us do that when its so easy!!! If its because we don't know how to do this its a different story, but if we do know then why don't we ? Trust me if you do this you are guaranteed to have robins in a month or so.

Now that we're aware of this why don't we get to know our robins. If you wish, read along.

American Robin

turdus migratorous

Identification; adult: orange belly dark back with yellow beak, juvenile: heavily streaked on belly.

Feeding: robins run on lawns to catch worms and hawk insects in the air.

Nesting: makes messy or clean nest out of mud, sticks and similar things. Makes nest on tree or building.

Song: tut, tut, tut or pup, pup, pup. Chirping. Loud plurrii, kiwii.

I hope you will enjoy robins even more after reading this post.

Toronto Zoo

Ostrich running

Stork's nest



Jesse, my mom and me sitting on a model hippo.

Yesterday, we went to the Toronto Zoo. When we arrived there, the parking lot was full, so we had to go to the next parking lot and it was almost full. (Maybe it had something to do with it being very hot out) We parked there and we had to go for a 15 minute walk to get the zoo. When we got to the zoo, IT WAS THE BIGGEST CROWD!! My dad thought it was funny, how could it be funny? To make the trip seem even harder Jesse, my little brother was walking way ahead of us. When we got him back we were in the middle of the crowd. I decided to go to the African Savanna. There the crowd got smaller. All of a sudden, people started yelling CONNOR! We figured that couldn't be good. Somebody was lost in a crowd. He was only three years old! We asked how we could help.

Wait a minute I thought this was about nature not search and rescue. Oh well, it is.

Anyway, they replied he was wearing blue and white stripes with buzz light-year on his shirt. My dad looked in the washroom and we looked around the zoo. Connor's mom found the staff and asked them to help. Soon, three year old Connor was found. He was smiling. His mom was so happy to have him back.

On our way from the crowd we saw a Stork's nest, Zebras, an Ostrich, baboons and lots of Canada Geese. The stork's nest was built on high rocks and out of thick branches. I thought the Stork nests were supposed to be either on the ground or high in trees.

The Zebras were running around. They were called Grevery's Zebras. There mane was long and thick. (Unlike Mountain Zebras).

The Ostrich did not want to get its picture taken. So it was running very fast away from the flashing cameras. Then a kid yelled look at the big bird! I thought well it is the biggest bird in the world. Eleven meters tall to be exact.

The baboons were climbing the wall and ignoring all the birds in their cage. Including Canada Geese and Savanna Sparrows.

After that we went to the Hyena cage. They were very fierce looking and running in circles in their cage. I think they were thinking about food... NO WAY I"M GOING IN THAT CAGE!!!

After that we went over to the giraffe cage. A baby giraffe was chasing a Canada Goose. The goose started flying and the giraffe almost fell over. No, I'm not kidding. It chased it a bit more and the giraffe can run surprisingly fast. Like 12miles per hour.

Anyway we had to start heading back. On the way back we saw everything we saw before so I'm not going to say it all over again.

We had a great day and after we went to the zoo we went for super.