Brief by Allen Best
Wildlife – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Robins usually disappear from Steamboat Springs during the winter. Not so this one. A bird count in December revealed 110 robins, compared to 4 the previous year.
“I’ve never seen a winter like this. We’re really scratching our heads on this one,” the Yampa Valley Birding Club’s Tom Literall said.
Literall told the Steamboat Pilot & Today that he believes the birds had migrated from farther north, and normally would have made their way to the Gulf of Mexico, or even Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, where the resort of Cancun is located. But last year’s heavy snows resulted in an uncommon berry crop, with an abundance of dried fruit still clinging to the branches of many bushes.
