All those are excellent trimmers.

Veilchen: I finally bought a field guide to birds, primarily so I could try to identify all (or at least some) of those little brown birds that flood the feeder and the ground under it. I looked up robins (in the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Birds - Eastern Region) - it says: "Although considered a harbinger of spring, robins often winter in the northern states, where they frequent cedar bogs and swamps and are not usually noticed by a casual observer, except when they gather in large roosts, often containing thousands of birds." It would make sense in my area which is cedar country with a pond/abandoned cranberry bog and stream nearby. Lots of wild winterberries near the pond and along the stream. I can visualize the robins moving to the bogs when the worms in the lawn head farther underground for the winter. The birds could chow down on the cedar berries and winterberry fruits. Or they could come down from Canada too. Whatever. The thought of a roost of thousands of robins is a little scary, though. Claire

IN the groups of birds, there were some that were similar to the Robins, dark gray, yellow beak and eye, but clearly no reddish orange breast coloring. They quickly moved away from my yard (still covered with a lot of snow and water) to another farther down that had more open grass and soil. The Northern Mockingbirds are too light gray, and I didn't see any white whits markings, though I could have easily missed them due to the distance. The Cedar Waxwings are a wishful possibility, but again, the birds I saw were of a uniformly dark color. Also, there are no berries around here. They were all gobbled up quickly in fall, and any drupes left on some trees were chased down by the squirrels on their high-wire act. The squirrels even go into my yews and eat all the little red berries. The birds I saw were clearly pecking and digging in the ground to find food. Today is colder and windy, and there aren't as many birds around

I'm in Iowa, and for the past 2 years Robins have stayed here all winter. Not a whole flock, and they weren't here every day, but enough to tell me they are tougher than we think! And this past winter was the 9th coldest on record. Thank you for the suggestion of fruits, Surya55. I'll try to feed them next year.