One time I stored a bag of maple leaves in a garbage bag which I used for feeding my compost. I didn't need it much over winter, and in spring when I went to use it, dozens of bumblebees came out. They'd hibernated in a bag of leaves. It was such a cold winter for our climate (it hit -15°C one night!) and somehow they were just fine.
When I was a kid I didn't think much about where they hibernate, how, or why. But they're definitely a species that continually yields fascinating revelations. Apart from their ability to sleep in leaves for 6 months or so, they're also able to learn to use door flaps and, apparently, survive flooding. They're resilient little creatures.
Every animal seems to have surprising abilities and behaviours if you're just lucky enough to see it.
Just happened to scroll past this just now:
"Beekeeper trains a bumblebee queen to use a protective cap in less than 24 hours. This protects the colony from hornets and similar threats."
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/2033115074982813727?s=20
I built such bumblebee houses a few years ago with the kids. The flap is essential against a kind of flies that lay their eggs in the bumblebee nest and their caterpillars eats the nest. Either the Queen or the others learn the usage quite fast. Sometimes next generation queens remember it in the next year
Decomposing and decaying organic material often generates heat (compost piles sometimes spontaneously catch on fire due to this). The bees may have survived due to that or maybe they were attracted to that in the first place.
> One time I stored a bag of maple leaves in a garbage bag which I used for feeding my compost. I didn't need it much over winter, and in spring when I went to use it, dozens of bumblebees came out.
This is definitely really interesting from a biological perspective but also immensely terrifying as soon as I visualize it. I might literally scream if I saw a swarm of what would appear to my panicked brain to be zombie bumblebees in my garage, and I'd certainly run and hide.
That's how endless insects, ones genetically design to survive our winters, do so. They crawl under leaves and dying grass, which insulates them from the cold a bit. Their bodies can freeze and thaw, and they'll be fine.
If you watch robins in the spring, after the snow melts but before the ground thaws, you'll see them turning over leaves to find and eat the insects. I see a lot of this, because I have a lot of trees (rural property, with forest around me). Often there are robins migrating, who stop and fill up thanks to my lawn and its plentiful ground leaf cover.
As a child, I was taught that robins "eat worms". Well, they surely do. But I see them eating anything and everything which moves. They're a lot like chickens, I guess.
At dusk, I often see them standing around and catching moths and things which take flight. Leaping into the air and snapping them up. Fun to watch.
Robins only eat bugs and worms as part of their raising an egg and feeding the chicks. Once the chicks can feed themselves they all switch to fruit and seeds.
That is absolutely not my experience here. My local robins eat bugs and worms all year, however, I do see them eating fruit (wild raspberries) here, when they are in season, and the fruit of some trees. I've never seen a robin eat a seed, only fruit. Robins also have multiple broods each year here. At least two, sometimes three rounds of chicks, so it's only the very end of summer that they aren't raising chicks (or having one following them around).
In many places the summer gets very dry often near end of year, and by then most of the insects are hunted out. That, along with fruit coming into season, may be one reason you're seeing this behaviour? I live beside a river and a wetland, though, so I have insects and worms all the time.
I wonder if we're talking about different robins. European ones aren't the same as North American ones, and I'm in Canada (currently in Quebec, but the same robins are in Ontario/etc too)
Mid Atlantic, I might be wrong about the seeds part. Their diet does shift in the winter as at 40 latitude they only migrate to closer to the shore and eat berries there until the spring.