BIRD REPORT: “As I was reading this morning’s Round the Square
about the bird sightings, I looked up from the paper and through my
window I saw a huge flock of robins in my yard. There must have
been at least 100. They just kept coming. It was a very unusual
sight.”
Carol Zintz of Emporium send us that note Wednesday.
She continued, “They were obviously looking for food. Could
this mean a very early spring? Or just very confused robins?”
“Also, when we had the warm weather about a week ago, I saw two
Eastern bluebird males. I wanted to tell them to ‘Go back, there is
more cold weather coming.’
“I just love all these crazy mixed-up birds.”
Meanwhile, we heard Monday from Don Carlson in Punta Gorda,
Fla., who said the robins were in his yard this week getting ready
to head north. Some must have taken the early train.
THIS, TOO: OK, we know robins are not the bellwether of spring –
that honor belongs to the red-winged blackbird.
But get this: We had a couple reports this week of animals out
and about when they should be hibernating.
John Bush phoned Tuesday to tell us he had just seen a chipmunk
cavorting in his yard in Wilcox. He’d been watching the critter
since the week before, trying unsuccessfully to get a photo of this
unusual visitor. Normally, John says, chipmunks hibernate until
about the end of February or the middle of March.
John tells us his father-in-law Jim Smith, a lifelong Wilcox
resident, recently passed away. Often in the past, Jim and John
would see something unusual like a chipmunk in January, and Jim
would say, “We should call The Bradford Era.”
“We never did,” John told us on the phone. So now he did. And,
of course, we love to get these animal reports, particularly from
our friends down in Elk County.
Lest you think the chipmunk was an oddity, we also got a letter
from Pat Franco of Rew about another unusual winter visitor. “On
Saturday, the 12th of this month, I saw a bear cub, by itself.
Probably weighed 50 to 60 pounds. I couldn’t believe they would be
out of hibernation this early,” he writes.
MORE STORES: Never fear, we have still more stores to tell you
about. Soon.
