Everyone loves a robin. Most probably because often times they are the very first sign of spring.

But, robins do some rather strange things; things that some might be called weird.  How many times have you seen a robin joyfully hopping along on top of an asphalt roadway listening for a worm with its head cocked waiting to pluck the hapless worm up through six inches of solid asphalt? 

Now, that might be a bit strange but what is weird is it’s practice of “anting”. 

A robin will find a particular type of an ant hill and sit patiently by  gently plucking up an ant one by one and then pulling each of it’s wing feathers through the ant’s jaws before letting the ant scurry away unscathed! For many years no one could figure out why a robin does this and then one day a very clever birdwatcher who also knew his way around the ant world discovered that the ant’s mouth contains a kind of formic acid that cleans the feather and also discourages parasites. Ahh so_there is a method in the robin’s strange behavior.

At any rate the next time you see a robin plucking ants up know that he is just cleaning his feathers.