What are the biggest dangers facing robins?
A. Dangers facing robins include (from most dangerous to least): • Cats, which are mainly ground hunters and kill many adult robins and even more fledgling robins every year. Learn the facts about cats and birds, and about the American Bird Conservancy’s Cats Indoors Program. • Pesticides, especially insecticides, sprayed on lawns. The chemicals used in the US and Canada break down into non-toxic molecules far faster than DDT did, but most are still highly toxic to robins for the time that they work on insects. Adult robins hopping on a freshly-sprayed lawn get their tummy feathers coated, and then if they incubate their eggs or babies, the toxins can be taken in, especially through nestling skin, to kill the babies. Pesticides also hurt populations of earthworms, which can make robins decline in areas where many people spray their lawns. • Crows and jays, which eat robin babies. This is a significant problem where these species are kept at artificially high numbers in cities, but othe
