a hunter and a vegetarian

I saw something yesterday that I had a hard time believing. My wife exclaimed, "There's a robin in the back yard." I didn't believe her and yet I knew she wouldn't lie so I had to look to see and sure enough there was a robin in our backyard sitting in one of our little crabapple trees. While I stood at the window two more robins flew at the single robin and they got into one of those little bird fights that you often see when a bird is being territorial.

We don't have robins in our yard during the winter. But here they were, three robins fighting over territory in our backyard on January 28th.

And while I was musing over that remarkable fact the robin reached out and ate one of the little crabapples on the tree. Maybe that doesn't seem like a very big deal to you but that's significant to me because a robin is a hunter and a meateater. Robins are not freeloading birds that eat food that kindhearted people put out for them, they hunt worms, kill them and eat them. Robins are tough little birds and that's one of the reasons I like them. So does the hunter become a vegetarian during the winter? Is the earth now rotating the opposite direction? Did the pope give up Catholicism? Did hell freeze over? Do submarines now have screendoors? Did the robin see a worm that had climbed the tree and was sitting on a crabapple and I only thought the robin eat a crabapple?

I need to do some research. What is a robin doing eating a crabapple in Indy on January 28? If anybody has a clue I'd like to hear it.