robins

This year's entry for the "how many robins can one fit in a (heated) birdbath competition.  In the early morning, every robin in Eldorado seems to make a beeline for this collective experience (shortly after this, there was a huge Thud as one of the young ones - I think the one third from the right, here - dodged the dissuasive prayer flags and flew straight into the living room window, but after fifteen minutes of standing, a little stunned, on the ground, it flew off again).  

I still have problems thinking about American Robins as "robins" - they - Turdus migratorius - are, as their name indicates, actually a kind of thrush, with a russet, not a red, breast.  They are also so much larger than English robins, and - with respect to their feelings - much less pretty.  But perhaps we should be lucky that there are only fourteen or so (visible) here - according to the Cornell birds site, winter roosts can approach a quarter of a million, and they wouldn't all fit in the birdbath.