Do your car a favor. Don’t park near a tree.

If you do, you may find it covered with bird – What’s the word? – poop.

“There are a lot of robins in town,” said Mark Robbins, a bird expert at Kansas University’s Natural History Museum.

Robins, he said, have a particular fondness for the berries on cedar and hackberry trees. Both are common in Lawrence.

“What’s happening is you’ve got a lot of birds eating a lot of berries, and that makes for a lot of bird poop,” Robbins said.

Starlings, too, share some of the blame, he said, “But it’s mostly robins.”

The influx, he said, is a consequence of global warming.

“I know that’s subject to debate, but here at the Natural History Museum we believe the data,” Robbins said.

Ever-milder winters, he said, have pushed the range of the robins’ winter migration further north. Birds that once wintered in Mexico or Texas, now settle in Kansas or Missouri.

“I’ve heard Christmas-bird-count reports of flocks with more than a million robins down by Branson, Mo.,” said Galen Pittman, a facilities manager with the Kansas Biological Survey.

“What’s happening is perfectly natural,” Pittman said, noting that while their numbers may be higher than in years past, it’s not unusual for robins to spend the winter in northeast Kansas.

“The thing you hear about robins being a harbinger of spring is a bit of a misnomer,” he said. “We have robins here all year. You may not see them, but they’re here.”

If your car has taken on the appearance of a Jackson Pollock painting on wheels, it’s due for a scrubbing.

“There’s an acidic quality to (droppings),” Pittman said. “I doubt it’ll erode your paint, but it’ll sure take a toll on your wax job.”