![]() To attract a mate and secure sufficient feeding territory, the male engages in belligerent boundary disputes, wherein scarlet-chested bluffing may lead to actual bloodshed. Renowned since ancient times as an avis solitaria, the robin is indeed a loner, with a passion for fighting. donne admired its ‘red stomacher’ and Wordsworth-who includes it in 14 poems-was frequently moved to mawkish depths, depicting one redbreast comforting an old cottager: ‘Dear intercourse was theirs, day after day.’ No doubt these visits kept the hermit’s pecker up. Any avian interlopers are ruthlessly repelled.Įssentially a little brown yob with fabulous PR, Cock Robin has inspired a cavalcade of saccharine minstrelsy from poets as disparate as Chaucer and Betjeman. His hops are punctuated by what one naturalist describes as a ‘characteristic epileptic stoop’. Head cocked as if pensive, he attends the turning of earth by gardeners, ploughmen and gravediggers. Naturally a denizen of thick hedgerow cover, the robin has evolved as a bold haunter of human homesteads, where he seeks out scraps to supplement the usual fare of worms, insects and spiders. Thomas Muffet- father of little Miss- wrote that the ‘ruddock’ was ‘esteemed a light and good meat’ as part of a Tudor diet. ![]() Who killed Cock Robin? Well, many used to end up in Continental roasting pans and their corpses were once plentiful around Mediterranean markets, strung up like pom-poms. Our robin is a feeble flier (it’s estimated to need some 9,240 wing beats per mile) and its innate curiosity renders it vulnerable to trapping. Millions of redbreasts breed across Britain, with limited southerly migration in autumn. Nostalgic emigrants have periodically dubbed other ruddy-tinged species ‘robins’, notably a North American thrush that looks as if its fuselage has been dunked ![]() Cute, plumpish and too familiar to warrant much physical description, Erithacus rubecula is distinguished by its tawny orange forehead, neck and throat, which is common to both sexes (the nickname robin was formally accepted by ornithologists only in 1952). Jaunty, companionable robins may adorn many a cheerful Christmas card, but, warns David Profumo, they're actually vicious, quarrelsome birds with a reputation for heralding death.īeloved by myth-makers and a mascot of modern Yuletide, Robin Redbreast is a vicious little bird and, despite its jaunty tailoring and winsome, liquid eye, it’s historically so associated with ill fortune that some country folk still won’t have it on their Christmas cards. Country Life's Top 100 architects, builders, designers and gardeners.
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