[Hot Tabasco]

we had a flock of fifty or so robins around he

I'd like to see the robin dumped as Michigan's state bird and nominate the chickadee as its replacement.

The robins head south for the winter and those that don't are just plain stupid......The chickadees are here year round, and no matter how cold it gets, they happly flit to the feeder......

They also have manners. They don't swarm the feeder gorging themselves and knocking seed to the ground like a pack of ill mannered sparrows, instead, they pick one sunflower seed and fly off to a tree branch to eat it. Then they return for another one.......

[Intolerant in NJ]

They don't swarm the feeder gorging themselves...I'm not expert enough to know all the different species we have at our feeder, but swarm they do - it's one of those which closes when too much weight is put on the perch bar to thwart squirrels, and I have it adjusted so that anything heavier than a male cardinal shuts it down - with all the cold and snow, we've sometimes got up to a dozen birds waiting around for a chance to eat, but when even smaller birds land two or three at a time on the bar the feeder goes closed. I've been waiting for a couple of weeks to see if any of them learn to take turns and not continuously shut off the food supply for not only themselves but their buddies, but so far none of them appear very bright in that regard....