You’ve probably heard someone say, “Spring is here — I saw a robin!”

For a long time people have thought of robins as a harbinger of spring, but here’s the truth about robins. As a predictor of spring, the robin stinks. Robins are even less reliable than Punxsutawney Phil.

Robins have an enormous geographic range, and that means we might see a robin right here in our region just about any time. The earliest “any time” for me was Jan. 1 many years ago. On that blustery winter day, I saw the red-breasted bird picking berries from a bush along the road.

In summer, how many times have we seen a robin hopping on the lawn, cocking its head and listening for a spider or an earthworm it can grab? When the ground is bare, robins are mostly meatatarians. But when the ground is covered with snow, robins are mostly vegetarians. As much as robins prefer bare, unfrozen ground, they can manage without it. That’s why you might see a robin in these parts on New Year’s Day.

Is there a bird that tells us spring has sprung? Yes. But it doesn’t amuse us by hopping around in our yards. It’s not a bird that visits our feeders. It’s not a bird with a pretty song, and it’s not even a bird that’s pretty.

A few weeks ago, I drove down to southern Maryland to speak at an event in Prince Frederick. Here at home the ground was frozen and covered with snow. When I crossed into Maryland, the first bird I saw was a turkey vulture. In fact, I saw as many as 20 or 30 at a time, soaring above fields and along tree lines.

Most birds have a varied diet, but turkey vultures have a particular liking for dead things. They’re a little like janitors. Janitors clean up messes in aisle six. For vultures, all of nature is aisle six. And vultures don’t work a normal shift. Their work is seasonal; they show up for work in spring.

Like janitors, vultures also work with their own array of chemical solutions. Without getting all sciency, I’ll just say vultures manufacture their own chemical which is not regulated by OSHA.

Their cleaning agent is their unique urine. It’s antiseptic, and they spray their feet with it to sanitize stinky stuff that’s even worse than their urine.

Vultures are the real snowbirds — not those retired people who abandon the rest of us stuck in the North, and return around the time of the March equinox. Like human snowbirds, these actual snowbirds avoid driving in the snow, shoveling snow, or paying high heating bills. By the time things freeze over, they’re already gone. Why is that? It’s because if vultures stuck around all winter, they’d starve. They can’t eat frozen food. Maybe that’s why you never see vultures in the frozen food aisle at Walmart.

But in spring, vultures return tanned, rested and ready to go to work on all the animals whose numbers Mother Nature called during the long, cold winter — including a few woodchucks that mis-guessed the arrival of spring and some robins that couldn’t tolerate the cold and the snow. As those frozen dinners thaw out all across the landscape, the vultures arrive to clean them up.

So, nature’s notification that spring is here is not groundhogs or robins, or even the ubiquitous red-winged blackbirds. The timing of those scavengers with the ultra-wide wingspan is perfect. They migrate their way north because as the snow melts, critters that died and got frozen during the winter are thawing. Vultures show up just in time to keep all that dead nutrition from going to waste. That means vultures get to enjoy the rotting flesh, while we get to enjoy the spring flowers.

Nope, it’s not the robins we patiently wait for. It’s the vultures. This winter is a cold one, a stubborn one, and even if you’ve seen a robin, you probably haven’t seen a vulture yet in these parts. But when you do, you’ll know spring has sprung.

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When “The Everyday Hunter” isn’t hunting, he’s thinking about hunting, talking about hunting, dreaming about hunting, writing about hunting, or wishing he were hunting. If you want to tell Steve exactly where your favorite hunting spot is, contact him through his website, www.EverydayHunter.com. He writes for top outdoor magazines, and won the 2015, 2018 and 2023 national “Pinnacle Award” for outdoor writing.