Have you noticed more robins in your yard this month? They are fun to watch as they hop about, turning their head to use one eye to carefully track their favorite spring food, earthworms.

The earthworms are more active once the soil warms, and robin migration usually follows the weather-map lines of spring temperature. The American Robin’s scientific name “Turdus migratorius” refers to this migration (Turdus is the “true” thrush genus the robin is a part of).

Migration is an annual large-scale movement of birds between their breeding homes and non-breeding grounds. Availability of food, longer day length and better nesting locations help explain why birds take on these challenging migrations, and more than half of birds in North America are migratory. New technology is helping understand these migrations.

Bird Cast (birdcast.info) is one resource that uses radar as well as bird sightings to offer bird migration forecasts in real-time. Many North American birds migrate at night, and the Bird Cast animated maps show large flocks moving across our spring landscape. This information helps pilots fly safer and radar facilities better interpret radar images.

Some robins over-winter in our moist temperate Puget Sound and British Columbia region, and may join the migrants travelling north to Alaska and other areas of Canada. For the robins that stay in our area to nest, males are more brightly colored and arrive earlier than females. Soon the “dawn chorus” will resound with the male American Robin’s familiar “cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up” song.

Both males and females gather twigs, grass and mud for the nest, but the female alone builds the nest. Four or five eggs are laid, and both parents busily feed and care for the nestlings.

Once the young birds can fly a bit, they leave the nest, termed “fledging.” They are most vulnerable during this 10-15 days, since they cannot sustain long flights and remain under cover in low bushes. Their parents continue to feed them.

After the fledglings are able to fly up to trees to roost, their fathers join with other father-led groups to teach their young to hunt for food and keep themselves safe. The females work on building another nest, or freshly re-lining the last nest, and may have two to three broods of young each year.

Robins are successful generalists who have adapted well to lawns, parks, gardens and agricultural development. American Robin populations are stable or increasing across North America, and it is one of the most recognizable birds.

Keeping your cat indoors is especially important during the time young fledglings are vulnerable, and planting native plants and avoiding pesticides also helps many species of birds in Sequim.

For more simple steps to help birds, take a look at www.3billionbirds.org/7-simple-actions.

Judith White is president of the Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society.