Attack of the Robin Red Breasts!

A morning walk in Anchorage can be filled with many surprises. Wildlife encounters within the city of Anchorage are common. There are always moose to spy, the occasional bear ambling across the trail, the bald eagle soaring towards the water or even wild salmon swimming upstream to spawn. But today I had a most surprising and intimidating encounter that I will not soon forget.

A lovely walk around Goose Lake surrounded by lupine, columbine, poppies and wild irises sent me hiking off the paved trail and onto a lesser dirt path looking for more wildflower beauty. Up and over a small earthy mound, I came upon an intersection of trails and briefly perused each direction before selecting a route to the south. Now before I go further, this was not Alaska wilderness I found myself in. This was not the alpine tundra above tree line, not the alder infested brush of bear country, but a skinny urban trail just north of the UAA parking lot. Obnoxious construction clangs and clamors shook my body, as I grew more bitter of the background construction zone noise just west of my location. But onward I went in search of visual beauty with the hopes of tuning out the thunderous booms next door.

I plodded down the mound and noticed a tree felled just off the trail. As my eyes scanned away from the tree I saw two birds flailing and squawking above the tree. I remember thinking "bird fight!" and recalled an earlier encounter of watching two woodpeckers defend their stump. But the flailing and squawking grew closer; brilliant yellow bird beak wide open with rage and anger was headed my way. The other bird was aimed toward my head and flying at me, not with a flutter of gentle wings but literally treading air and viciously flapping its wings on a diagonal towards my left ear. The construction sounds faded into mere whispers, but this was no sweet and joyful chirping common to the robin. It was a call of alarm, of panic, of attack and it was directed at me!

The robins worked in tandem: squawking, diving, frantically flapping all within feet of my head. At this point I was cowered, down low, keeled over in submission, heart racing, laughing madly in both fear and disbelief. Were these gentle, red-chested symbols of spring about to peck my eyes out or draw blood from my skull? Am I going to get away from these beasts unscathed? A flash of what-to-do-in-a-bear-charge information sprinted through my thoughts but I quickly realized I was dealing with feathered, much smaller creatures and I refocused on just getting the hell out of there.

I scrambled back up the mound, hands over head, panting, looking in every direction for possible attack. I laughed wildly at the insanity of my predicament and realized that I was so frightened that I was suffering from the physical effects of fear. Prickly tingles shot downward and forced my legs into a catatonic state that made forward movement a struggle. I was breathing rapidly and as I brought my hand up to calm my chest I realized I was shaking. A sudden feeling of ermergency spread from my chest outward. Robin red breasts are attacking you! Will I ever see my daughter again? Disbelief and fear led way to the giggles, giddy laughter and head shaking. Then the urge. The need. The immediate and instant feeling of needing to relieve myself. Those robins scared the piss out of me.

With the robins seemingly out of sight, and my breathing and catatonic leg status returning to normal, I looked again for a reasonably hidden spot to crouch and release and yet another dirt path led me to a patch of dwarf dogwoods hidden by a branchy spruce. I untied my pants and looked up ready to lower when Mama moose looked at me with total disgust. Get out of here you human; frightened by birds, I don't even want to look at you. Her calf barely glanced at me, but dismissed me with its body language and reached under Mama for a drink. My hands immediately rose up like a convict giving up the chase; if I had a white flag I would have raised it in surrender.

I walked back to civilization and relieved myself in the dirty women’s’ restroom of the Paddleboat Cafe.


(I spent an hour on the computer reading about robin red breasts and here is some of what I found: Robins defend themselves from attack by sending alarm calls when predators come near. If there are other neighboring Robins to help, the Robins will work together to mob the predator or help each other escape (Titus and Haas, 1990). Robins dash at the unwelcome visitor chirping loudly, snapping their bill, and erecting the feathers, in hopes of scaring the predator off or bringing enough attention to the area for other Robins to assist in the mobbing attack (Howell, 1942). Robins are very aggressive, especially females, when an intruder enters the nest site because of their investment in survival of offspring.)