Robins

[kopend]

i saw a robin in my garden today, for the first time in ages- how come i only see them in the autumn / winter ??

[janbee]

They're around all year but we only seem to notice them in autumn/winter. Maybe they head off to Benidorm for the summer hols.

[Prudie]

Well they are here all year but I expect they get enough food elsewhere in the Summer so no need to come looking in gardens. I have a robin who will eat from my hand, he comes every day to get pink suet. I even have a whistle I do to call him.

[murraymints]

I have front garden robins...3 and back garden robins 4....they don't half squabble !

[janbee]

Prudie, I used to have a nuthatch that did that but he/she must've died. Not been seen for a while. I am surrounded by bl***y cats where I live.

[janbee]

Minty, male robins HATE one another with a vengeance. They are very aggresssive towards each other and VERY territorial.

[murraymints]

found a dead one under the front hedge...dual to the death ?

[janbee]

minty, also, if you're ever near the Hermitage of Braid for a walk, you'll always see loads of robins in there, all shouting the odds at one another.

[Prudie]

janbee how wonderful. Robin's are pretty common for being tame but a nuthatch, that's something else!

[janbee]

It was a one off Prudie. Must've been lost. They're not really town birds.

[MargoTester]

We have a wood behind our house and have regular visits from a nuthatch, in fact we once had two on the nut bags T the same time! They are beautiful birds. We are also blessed with regular visits from a pair of greater spotted woodpeckers and one year we had a pair and the baby was on the fence waiting to be fed. I have no idea how long they live and wether or not they are the same birds each year.

[vakayu]

Seemingly they are called robins because years ago mail was delivered by postmen wearing red tunics,and people associate them with Christmas because of delivering more mail ie Christmas cards.The postmen were nicknamed "robins" giving these birds their name!!

[Prudie]

Is that true vakayu, I'd thought it far more likely the other way round. if it is true what were robins called before there were postmen because they've been around a lot longer.

[woofgang]

other way round, postmen were called "robins" because of their red waistcoats so robins were put on christmas cards because the postmen brought them.

[gingejbee]

Our robins have been around since Spring...their breasts had virtually no red colour early on, but are now vivid.

[Old_Geezer]

I understood there was a fictional tale where the major characters were a wren called Jenny, and a redbreast called Robin. And that the name Robin stuck and was used instead of redbreast from that point on. (Probably for prudish reasons I'd guess, since the word breast had started to become applied to women only by that point.) Never heard the one about postmen before.

[Hypognosis]

The only other thing which no-one has mentioned yet is that, in Spring and Summer, it's hard to spot anything in the hedgerows because of the leaf cover. They won't break cover to come to your feeders unless you're offering live mealworms or earthworms. They're ground-feeders, really. When the soil is baked hard, I can't imagine what they eat instead. Caterpillars?

Anyway, main point here is visibility factor rather than presence/absence. If you try the BTO website (no signup required to view data) and view the map for robin, scroll down and see the 'reporting rate' graph. It gives an idea of how visible they are to observers, through the year. Some species go into hiding while they moult etc.

[Old_Geezer]

There are a few refences in the web search, including this one http://www.storynory.com/2008/12/08/the-wedding-of-robin-readbreast-and-jenny-wren/

[Clanad]

Here, in the northern tier of Staes in the U.S., robins migrate, apparently following, according to scientists, a mean temperature fo 36 degrees (F). But, it's also ben noted that some robins do stay around and on occassion move farther north. This action, apparently is centered on their primary winter food being fruit. "... As the ground thaws in the spring, they switch to earthworms and insects. While the robins may arrive when temperatures reach 36 degrees, this is because their food becomes available not because the robins themselves need warm temperatures..."

At any rate, just a few days ago, suddenly there were an estimated 20 to 30 robins in our front yard. They stayed around for an hour or so and just as suddenly, disappeared. I suspect because there was no food. Notably, most of them were still the slightly speckeled breasted "youngsters", but with a few more mature birds mixed in.

We've had an unusually mild Fall and we likely won't see them again until early April...

[Prudie]

Is that the European Robin Clanad or the American Robin which is a completely different bird?

[Clanad]

Never thought of that, Prudie... our robin is apparently a different family or genus... accoding to this site "...
The American robin is considerably larger than the European robin, weighing up to 2.8 oz (80 g) with a body length of 8.7 in (22 cm), a slate-grey back, a white throat, and a brick-red breast. Young birds have a spotted breast, with reddish tinges on the flanks. The American robin is very widespread in North America, breeding from just south of the high-arctic tundra at the limit of trees and taller shrubs, to southern Mexico... (Source: Status of North American Robins).

Additionally, "...
Robins are songbirds in the family Musicicapidae, in the thrush subfamily, Turdinae, which contains more than 300 species, including various thrushes, chats, solitaires, redstarts, nightingale, wheatear, and others...", Whereas "...
The European robin (Erithacus rubecula) is the familiar "robin red-breast." Robins elsewhere were given their common name, robin, because of their superficial likeness to the European robin, which to many English-speaking colonists was a common and much-loved song-bird of gardens and rural places. During the era of European exploration and conquest of distant lands, these settlers longed for familiar surroundings and contexts in their newly colonized, but foreign countries. Consequently, they often introduced European species to achieve that effect, and named native species after familiar European ones with which there was a outward resemblance. As a result of this socio-cultural process, many species in the thrush family were variously named "robin" in far-flung places that were settled by the British, including Australia, Asia, and North America..." (Blame it on the Brits!)