Thread by @wayfaringwilly

I want to share a story with you about an infamous American Robin, GG-XY (for green over green on left leg, metal over yellow on right; pictured).

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📸@CKaster

This bird is a female who literally made the front page news last year, as the photo of her diligently feeding her young while sporting a GPS antenna festooned the feature by @APNews writer @larsonchristina.

It was a fantastic shot by @CKaster that showcased this awesome robin doing her annual rhythm of raising young while also showing how she'll be providing us this awesome data about where she spends her time throughout the year.

This is also a story about how much community surrounds these robins. This nest and this female were first noticed by a friend of a friend, who shared via text they had a robin nesting on their porch & were worried about disturbing her.

This friend wasn't a bird enthusiast by any means, but through watching her day by day through their window, they grew to really love this particular bird but also share a newfound love for birds in general, & all the enormous risks they must face to go about living.

after ensuring they were okay w/ it, I visited their yard a few days after the eggs hatched to try to catch this female & her mate & success! I got them both & we could follow their habits each day, knowing who they were by the unique combination of color bands on their legs.

when it came to fledging time, the owner of the house texted me to say he noticed a commotion in the yard next door & saw that outside cats had two of the fledglings in their mouths. He tried to chase them away but to no avail; he was pretty sure all young were killed.

the homeowner told me he was surprised at the "amount of rage" he felt seeing this when he didn't even consider himself a bird person...but after having been so invested in this female & her young for so long, he felt connected to her & was devastated at seeing this happen.

I was also devastated but fuming, knowing all too well the destruction outside cats wreak on #birds, on herptiles, on insects...on so much wildlife.

This is of course ANOTHER opportunity to have conversations with ppl who feed outside cats to give a real, personal story of what cats are capable of, & we tried to have this conversation with the person next door who feeds these cats...but had no real success in changing minds.

This female robin persisted though. She went on to attempt two other nests & successfully fledged the third from a nest way up high in a tree in the backyard. Of course there's no telling the fate of those juveniles once they left the nest, but I could at least confirm fledging.

fast forward to months later, when I'm excitedly checking my computer for updates on any satellite transmissions coming from her tag. I thought for sure this lady may be a resident, albeit nomadic robin, as she stayed pretty close to her area in Cheverly, MD.

then following a burst of cold weather & snow in early January, boom! she made a trip to the Delmarva peninsula, where she continued to hang out until April, where she was spotted by another person in the neighborhood, @B1RDERGIRL, now in a different yard.

I was SO excited to hear of this sighting of her because her tag had stopped transmitting in mid-March, so I wasn't sure if she was gonna stick around in the Delmarva area & try her luck there, or come back to her usual stomping grounds.

because a goal of my research is not only to learn about the patterns of annual migration in robins but to also understand how flexible they may be, it is really critical for me to get multiple yrs of data for the same birds.

Bc the tags only last a yr, it means I have to recapture the same individual again, take the current tag off, & then put a new tag on. As many of you know from following me on twitter & for all those who've worked with robins, you know that this is no small task.

robins are incredibly wily, smarter than they're given credit, & certainly recognize me as the alien abductor (the person who poked & prodded & took all sorts of measurements). I knew this lady was going to take some major effort to try to get her again.

I first tried for her near her previous backyard, hopeful she was also using that area again this year. No dice. I then decided I needed to wait until she had a nest because setting up near nests is usually a much more reliable way of capturing robins.

BINGO! a few wks later, we found her nest. problem was, it was super high. way too high to set a net near. so then we spent a lot of time watching her & trying to figure out her favored spots to forage & hang out in the yard...many thanks to the many observations by @B1RDERGIRL

after waiting until I thought she was later into incubation, I came very early in the morning one day, set up a booby trap of nets in the yard, & whaddya know? we caught her first thing as she got off the nest to forage, much to my amazement & elation!

I took her old tag off, fitted her with a new tag, & off she flew!

later that day, I received updates from @B1RDERGIRL that she was back on her nest, snug & tightly keeping her eggs warm. I was so happy to know she'd come back to her nest & she was doing swell.

then today, I got a text from @B1RDERGIRL. she told me she noticed a cat nearby & saw a robin in its mouth. Denise jumped out of her house, startled the cat, & the cat dropped the bird. The bird flew off & like a flash, Denise noticed the silver of the antenna. It was GG-XY.

It's been hrs since this morning & GG-XY hasn't been seen, nor has she come back to her nest. I have no idea what kind of injuries she sustained & whether they were life threatening. I can't check her tag bc they only take a limited # of pts, & aren't set to transmit until August

only time will tell, by observations by this wonderful community of homeowners & by my own team, on whether GG-XY will have survived this cat attack. If she isn't seen, I then am left to hope I'll see locations start popping up in August.

If no locations come through & we don't see her, I've got to assume the worst. I'm absolutely gutted by this news. Not only bc it's an awful thing to happen to a bird, but also bc this was a bird I have been rooting for from the start. She was the poster child of my project!

I will continue to root for her in the days ahead. I wanted to share this story bc it's a very personal one that I hope may cause some that read it to have some pause. This was a wild bird who has literally had to fight against cats every step of the way.

Cats killed her young from last yr, & very likely have killed young of many other birds, adult birds, & other wildlife in the neighborhood. I don't hate the cat, but I severely condemn those that feed & support cats being outside.

It's not worth repeating how many studies have shown how cats kill #wildlife & how any number of mitigations (bells, TNR, etc.) don't actually fix the problem, which is that it's in a cat's nature to kill for fun.

You can't change an animal's nature, but you can change what you do about it, which is give your cat what it needs inside, or in a safe confined space outside (catios! walk with your cat on a leash!) where it can't do harm to wildlife.

doing just these things alone will literally help save nearly 3 billion birds that get killed by cats annually in just the US and Canada.

if you want to do more than that to help birds, check out 3billionbirds.org & follow the 7 simple actions. #birds

that's the end of my story. I really hope GG-XY turns up. And I really hope this story resonated with you.