By Annis Pratt I know that The Betsie was declared a Michigan Wild river back in the 1970s, but I didn't know that its robins were all declared wild at the same time. These are not your little hop and peck back yard friends singing Tira Lira Lira sweetly sung from the apple tree - Betsie River robins have attitude! During breeding season they streak in and out of their nest trees, and if you go anywhere near them they attack, like Red-winged Blackbirds, from above. Yes, they sing in the summer mornings, but these are different songs than their down State numbers - no more soprano warblings, but deeply resonant and assertive operatics, aggressively counterpointed against anything local orioles and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks in the dawn chorus can come up with. From midsummer on gangs of robins rampage about, doing all the kinds of things you associate with bigger, tougher birds. When there is any kind of hatch over the river they decide to be Great Crested Flycatchers, soaring on the updraft and swooping down on their prey, getting so into it that one of them will decide to be a kingfisher instead and head straight for the water, veering up at the very last moment. Then they soar up to a high branch where, once they have munched their catch down, they sit and scream like kingbirds. When there is nothing else to do they chase each other through the branches of the tallest trees yelling like Blue Jays as they lunge and attack, attack and lunge. Anything they don't like, from snake to owl, they gather together in mobs to harass with raucous calls like the curses of crows or even, occasionally, the rattling leers of the ravens who nest in the tallest pines lining the meadow across the river. By autumn they have stopped coming down on the ground at all: they have never shown any interest in worms, but now they switch from flying insects to gorge on dogwood berries, highbush cranberries, and wild cherries, building up their body fat for heroic migrations elsewhere, because you better know that these are not tame robins who will hang around all winter, waiting for you to put raisins and hamburger meat into your bird feeder: they have things to do, and places to go, even if they have to fight each other for every carbohydrate that will take them there! American Robin Photo (title Banner): Courtesy of Chan Robbins Reference page: Gough, G.A., Sauer, J.R., Iliff, M. Patuxent Bird Identification Infocenter. 1998. Version 97.1. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, MD. http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/Infocenter/infocenter.html