
Robin
- Juvenile robins have a brown rather than red breast; they grow the red feathers after their first moult.
- British robins seldom move far from where they hatched, but many Finnish and Swedish robins migrate to the Mediterranean for the winter.
- At the end of the Victorian era robin skins became popular adornments for ladies’ hats.
- Until the early years of the 20th century the robin was usually known as the redbreast.
- The robin is a member of the thrush family, so is related to the blackbird and the nightingale.
- Both male and female robins hold their own territories in the winter, so both sexes sing the same winter song.
- The robin was declared Britain’s National Bird on December 15th, 1960.
- The first British postmen wore red coats, and gained the nickname of robin or redbreast.
- Robins are short-lived: the record for longevity is held by a ringed bird that survived until it was over eight.
- Ringing recoveries of British-ringed robins have shown that the most frequent cause of death is being killed by a cat.
- Robins not infrequently sing at night, usually under artificial lights. They are often mistaken for nightingales.
- Most pairs of robins will try and raise as many as three broods of chicks a year, but some mange as many as five.
- There are scores of birds around the world with the name robin, but few are even distantly related to our bird.
- Robins breed throughout the British Isles, and occur on almost all of our offshore islands.
- Each robin has a unique breast pattern, and can (with difficulty) be recognised individually.
- Robins are omnivorous, eating everything from fruit to spiders.
- Many attempts have been made to introduce robins to America, Australia and New Zealand. All have failed.
- Robins will invariably defend their territories from other robins, sometimes fighting to the death.
- British robins will not enter standard nest boxes with round entrance holes, but they do like open-fronted boxes.
- Given a choice of any food, most robins like mealworms best of all.
- British robins are famous for their tameness, but this contrasts with their behaviour on the Continent, where they are shy and generally unapproachable.