Robins - strange behaviour

[WesternGuy]

For the past 30 + minutes, my wife and I have stood at our sliding glass door to the back deck and watched robins go crazy in the courtyard behind our condo. I counted as many as nine at one time, but there must be many more. They are flying around chasing each other, eating, I don't know what, in the grass. In the midst of this was a Northern Flicker who left the courtyard after about five minutes or so, along with a few partridge. I managed to get a few photos, but they wouldn't stay still long enough to get any decent ones. I am going to try and upload one that has at least 4 robins in it. The birds are both mature males and females and immature ones, presumably from the last nesting - robins here have at least two broods each summer, sometimes three if the summer is long and warm. My question is...is this behaviour indicative of migrating birds? Maybe someone who has better insight than I do would care to comment - picture below (hopefully)

Cheers,

WesternGuy

(picture should be here, but It doesn't seem to want to upload??? try later - insight please)

[WesternGuy]

So here is one of the pictures, it actually has five robins in it, four of them in a line diagonally across the central part of the picture and one in the moat around the tree in the centre of the picture. The robins are gone, but a friend of my wife's said they were doing the same thing around her place the other day - go figure.

WesternGuy

[Knight]

Must be some kind of Fall ritual or something, saw the same thing last week in the pole yard at work. Maybe paulnj can fill us in .

[Loupey]

I seem to remember a story I heard a few years back about birds (robins in particular) eating fallen berries which had started to rot with mold. Seems that a certain mold causes the animals that eat them to get the crazies - drunk.

Don't know if this is the case here. But it was the first thing that came to mind.

[cyberlord]

Google "intoxicated robins".

Of course I'm not saying that was the case in this instance, it's the wrong time of year. But it is possible.

[WesternGuy]

Maybe it is a fall ritual. No berry trees in our courtyard, so don't know what it is - have to watch next year and see if they do it again!!

WesternGuy