Several readers have emailed to ask about the robins they're seeing in their yards and neighborhoods. They wonder why the birds haven't gone south. One reader suggested that perhaps the males were "marrying local girls." No, its not romance. It's modification of climate. We have had and are having winters sufficiently mild, overall, to allow these birds to stick around. We have a resident flock of about 40 robins in the Wayzata area; some were in our yard yesterday. Also yesterday, two birders who belong to an email exchange network focusing on local birds reported flocks of "hundreds." Robins never migrated farther south than necessary to find mild weather. We might be seeing some surging, birds moving south and north with weather changes. And warmer conditions south of us (Iowa, Missouri) could prompt early spring migration, fattening our over-wintering flocks. The birds, by the way, subsist on berries and fruit still on trees, crab apples for instance. Protein? They find what they can. I've watched Wayzata robins dig in the snow behind a local bait shop for the dead minnows skimmed off the bait tanks. Here's a photo of one of those birds.