Just realized how much robins actually eat after talking to a gardener

I was chatting with my neighbor June who gardens about 3 blocks over, and she told me robins can eat up to 14 feet of earthworms in a single day. I always just thought they pecked around for bugs, but that number really hit me different. Anyone else ever stop and think about how much a single bird actually consumes in a day?

3 comments

3 Comments

blair_webb1mo ago

Why do we always assume someone's making stuff up just because we haven't seen it ourselves? I used to think the same way about honeybees til I watched one work a single flower cluster for like 15 minutes straight. Little things are way more efficient than we give them credit for.

young.nora1mo ago

Well, you just made me reconsider my own doubts. I've always been a bit skeptical about those bird feeding statistics, but watching a chickadee in my yard methodically pick through a single suet block for nearly 20 minutes really put things in perspective for me. Sometimes we just need to see the steady, quiet work of nature with our own eyes to trust what's really happening out there.

the_faith1mo ago

Hold on, I gotta push back on this a little. 14 feet of worms sounds like a made up number a gardener would tell you to sound impressive. I've watched robins in my yard for years and they spend more time hopping around looking lost than actually swallowing down earthworms. Plus, even if they did eat that much, worms are mostly water anyway so it's not like they're packing in calories. A bird that small physically can't hold that much food in its stomach at once without exploding. I think gardeners exaggerate to make their job seem harder than it is.