Date: 1/4/26 9:55 am From: Pepper Trail <pepper.trail...> Subject: [RV Birds] Huge numbers of robins on the Medford CBC, with a request
Terrence Phillipe and I covered Area L on the Medford CBC on Saturday. As always, we began on Gold Ray Road near the river to see the morning fly-out of robins, which has often been dramatic. This year we estimated 15,000 from 7:30 to 8:15.
In the late afternoon, we went to the Kirtland Road crossing over Bear Creek for the evening fly-out. We did our best to keep track from 3:45-5:00 PM. Our best - and conservative - estimate was 65,000. This was based on an estimated 1000-1500/minute from 4:00-4:30, and 500-800/minute for the 3:45-4:00 and 4:30-5:00 periods. It was overwhelming.
There's no way to know how many, if any, of the dawn 15,000 were part of the evening 65,000. The dawn birds were mostly leaving to the northwest; the evening birds were mostly coming in from the southeast, suggesting that at least some of the birds were different.
So here is a request for any Medford birders who like to get up and about early. It would be great to have a morning fly-out count at the Kirtland Road/Bear Creek area, to compare with our Gold Ray dawn fly-out. There is a big safe pull-out just on the Medford side of the Bear Creek bridge on Kirtland Road, which we where we did our count. On Saturday, the robins started to fly out at Gold Ray in good numbers at around 7:30, with some movement beginning around 7:15. The main fly-out at Gold Ray was over by 8:15.
It really is an amazing spectacle, and well worth getting out early. We found the only way to try to tally the numbers was to try to estimate birds passing overhead per 30 seconds, and double that to get the numbers/minute.
If anyone takes this on, please post your results on Rogue Valley Birds. Thanks!
Pepper
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