Caronport birds are weird.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been working as part of the Grounds crew here in Caronport. We're the "Make It Look Good" team, trimming trees, cutting grass, working the landscape, and weed wacking constantly. A day usually goes by without too much to speak for. However, yesterday we had some strange visitors.

We were digging up some dead bushes beside one of the dorms, and we noticed a few little robins making their way toward us. Usually birds fly away at a moments' notice, and at the drop of a pin. But Caronport's robin population is very weird. They are almost completely tamed. A little robin stood only 3 feet away from my shoe as I dug a hole, starring up at me, waiting expectantly. When I threw the load of dirt to the side, the robin bounced its way to the top and plucked out a few worms. Then down it came and stood, waiting again for the next load. This was very astonishing to me, so I tried another. I dumped the soil, and again the little bird bobbled its way to the soil pile and plucked a few more worms, and then down to its waiting spot again! This continued for several minutes until the robin had no more beak space for more worms. It flew away only to return about 20 minutes later!

These birds' tameness does not only extend to shoveling workers. Another day I was whipping some weeds down with a very load 4-stroke engine Honda weed-wacker. As I made my way around a picnic bench, I saw a robin standing on the ground, looking the opposite direction. I thought it would surely fly away since the machine I was using is so loud, and should frighten such small animals away. But I actually walked around the robin with the weed-wacker as I continued working. I thought for a moment that maybe it was dead or deaf. But that couldn't be. When I walked closer to it, the robin walked a little further away. And it couldn't be deaf, because when I left, it continued to hunt for worms by pecking its beak into the ground and pulling out worms. (As far as I know, they must have quite the sensitive audio to detect underground worms.) So I really don't know what's up. The only explanation I have is that Caronport birds are weird.