Scrap Book Project – British Birds, The Wren

I like the Wren and would like to encourage them to pass by more often and I have put a wren box in a yew tree in the hope that this might encourage him to nest here.  Although I don’t see them very often Wrens are among the most common birds in the UK, and according to the RSPB there are currently around ten million pairs.

They suffer from heavy losses during the winter though because food can become hard to come by for them.  In the most recent coldest winter, 1962/3 there wasn’t a frost-free night from 22^nd December until 5^th March.    The continuous freezing temperatures meant that snow cover lasted for over two months and the winter of 1962/63 was the coldest over England and Wales since 1740 with mean maximum temperatures for January and February 1963 more than 5 °C below the average.

Seventy-five per cent of British wrens were thought to have died during the harsh winter of 1962-3.  That is why it is important to feed them in cold weather.  They suffer from cold because at a length of less than ten centimetres they are the second smallest birds in the UK, after the Goldcrest.  Because it may be difficult to catch spiders and I am not going to do it for them a handful of grated cheese is the usual recommendation.

The food needs to put on the ground and their scientific name explains why, it is taken from the Greek word “troglodytes”, from “trogle” a hole, and “dyein” to creep, which literally means “cave-dweller” and refers to its habit of disappearing into cavities or crevices whilst searching for spiders or to roost.

Another interesting fact about the Wren is that it has an enormous voice for its size, ten times louder, weight for weight, than a cockerel, so try and imagine, if you can, a cock-a-doodle-doo with that sort of vocal power!

In the Spring the male Wren builds several nests, as many as six or seven and then invites a female to select her favourite. These are called cock nests but are never completely finished or lined until the female chooses the one she wants.  I suppose that is a bit like a man building a house and leaving the decoration and soft furnishings to his wife.

According to European folklore, the Wren is the King of the Birds.  Long ago the birds held a contest to see who could fly the highest; at first it looked as though the Eagle would win easily, but just as the Eagle began to get tired, the Wren, which had cleverly hidden under the Eagle’s tail feathers, crept out and soared far above.

The Wren also features in the legend of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who was supposedly betrayed by the noisy bird as he attempted to hide from his enemies. Traditionally, St. Stephen’s Day on 26^th December has been commemorated by ‘Hunting the Wren’, when young Wrenboys would hunt hedgerows and catch the bird and then ritually parade it around town,

The diminutive Wren also appeared on the last farthings to be minted in the UK from 1948 until 1956 and it ceased to be legal tender from 1960. I don’t know this for sure but I have always assumed that the image of the Wren appeared on the farthing because of the fact that it was such a small coin.  That seems plausible to me anyway.

Shakespeare refers to the wren no fewer than nine times in his different Plays. Its small size is noticed, and the bird is credited with an amount of courage disproportionate to its stature. When Macduff flees to England his wife bitterly complains that he left her and his children without his protection:

“He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch:
for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.”

__________________________________________________

Other Posts about Birds:

Blackbirds

Collared Doves

Dunnock

Fat Balls

Mozart’s Starling

Robin

Starlings

Starlings in the USA

Vinkensetting

__________________________________________________

Scrap Book Project – British Birds, The Sparrow

Not exclusively British of course because they are found all over the World but according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds the population of house sparrows in Britain has fallen by nearly 70% in the past thirty years, it is rarely seen in London anymore and there are fewer in urban back gardens and this decline in numbers is now so serious that the sparrow is on the RSPB red list of conservation importance.

Their web site explains that the UK’s birds can be split in to three categories of conservation importance – red, amber and green.  Red is the highest conservation priority, with species needing urgent action. Amber is the next most critical group, followed by green.  Also on the red list are the Thrush and the Starling but happily on the green list are the blackbird, the blue tit, the wren and the robin.

While watching the birds I noticed that some of the sparrows looked very different indeed and when I consulted my book of garden birds I realised that I hadn’t been paying enough attention to detail because there were three types of different bird that I had been generally referring to as sparrows and it turns out that one isn’t even a sparrow at all!  It’s a Dunnock!

First of all (picture 1) there is the tree sparrow, which is smaller than the more common house sparrow and quite different in appearance. It has a chestnut brown head and nape (rather than grey), and white cheeks and collar with a contrasting black cheek-spot.

It is on the red list and is only really found down the east of the country and not in Wales or the southwest at all.  I am really pleased to see them here because based on the Common Bird Census, there was a decline of 85% in numbers in Britain between the two breeding periods (1968-72 and 1988-91), which was the largest decline of any common species during this period.  Little is known about the factors affecting numbers of tree sparrows, but their recent decline has occurred at the same time as decreases in the numbers of other farmland birds which share its diet of grass, wild flower and cereal seeds, and also feed their young on insects and it is therefore possible that its decline is due to changing agricultural practices.

Next (picture 2) is the good old house sparrow which is much more numerous and found all over the British Isles.  They are noisy and gregarious and are cheerful and welcome visitors to the bird table and the feeders.  There may seem to a lot of house sparrows and their numbers are estimated at thirteen million, but the worrying fact is that thirty years ago there were twenty five million and the population in London has declined by a whopping 70%.  That’s something to be concerned about!

No one really knows why but some of the suggestions are that new house building methods and materials make it difficult for sparrows to find suitable nesting sites and the current fad for overly tidy gardens also takes away some of their natural habitat.  So I say forget about clinically tidy gardens and leave some wildlife friendly area in the garden and welcome the sparrow back!  I think the RSPB will agree with me.

Finally (picture 3), there is the Dunnock, which I am certain I must have seen before but am embarrassed to say that I have previously failed to identify him correctly.  He looks like a sparrow but he isn’t, even if sometimes he is referred to as the hedge sparrow.  It is a small brown and grey bird and quite quiet and unobtrusive with better manners than the squabbling sparrows, I have often seen it on its own, creeping along the edge of flower beds or amongst the shrubs, moving with a rather nervous, shuffling gait, often flicking its wings as it goes.  They are more edgy and aware than the sparrows and often disappear abruptly when disturbed.

I know a bit more about sparrows now and a lot more than I did in 1961 when I wrote about them in my school Nature Studies exercise book which my dad kept in his scrap book…

Scrap Book Project – British Birds, The Robin

In 1960 the Times Newspaper conducted a poll to identify Britain’s favourite bird.  Not surprisingly, the Robin had a landslide victory and as a result there was a campaign to have it adopted as Britain’s national bird.  The Government however did not respond to the concept (the Tories were in power at the time and this had no benefit for the rich people in the country) and Britain remains therefore without an official avian representative!  As a sort of consolation the Robin was used as a symbol of a Bird Protection Society, but only for a few years before because this was discontinued after a short while.

Unlike most other woodland and garden birds, the robin rarely migrates abroad and is probably for this reason that we associate them with Christmas, taking a starring role as they do every year on thousands of Christmas cards.  The Robin has also appeared on a complete set of Christmas postage stamps in 1995 and before that in 1966 in a ‘Birds of Britain’ set.

An old English folk tale seeks to explain the Robin’s distinctive red breast and legend has it that when Jesus was dying on the cross, the Robin, then simply brown in colour, flew to his side and sang into his ear in order to comfort him in his pain.  The blood from his wounds stained the Robin’s breast, and after that all Robins got the mark of Christ’s blood upon them.  The robin’s red breast is often assumed to play a role in courtship but in fact it is purely used in defence because despite their distinctly cute appearance Robins are fiercely territorial and will defend their patch to the death.

All the birds of the air                                                                                                                    fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,                                                                                                   when they heard the bell toll                                                                                                      for poor Cock Robin.

In the birds of Shakespeare,  the Robin (or the Ruddock) gets three mentions, in Cymberline, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Henry IV part 1.

Because their home colours are red at least eight English football clubs are nicknamed ‘The Robins’.  Only one other bird is the nickname of more than one club and that is the Magpie, so the Robin is rather over represented in this respect.  Here is my list, but there are probably some more:

West Bromich Albion            Throstles (Song Thrush)

Norwich City                           Canaries

Newcastle United                    Magpies

Notts County                           Magpies

Leeds  United                          Peacocks

Sheffield Wednesday             Owls

Crystal Palace                          Eagles

Cardiff City                               Bluebirds

Swansea City                            Swans

Torquay United                       Gulls

Brighton & Hove                     Seagulls

Kiddermister    Town             Harriers

and the Robins are: Chetenham Town, Swindon Town, Bristol City, Wrexham, Altincham, Ilkeston Town, Bracknell Town and Selby Town!

None of these nicknames though are as interesting as my favourite.  Hartlepool United are known as the Monkeyhangers because during the Napoleonic wars the residents of the town allegedly mistook a monkey for a Frenchman and strung it up from the town gallows.  According to local folklore a French ship was wrecked off the coast and the only survivor was a monkey, wearing a French uniform.  On discovering the monkey, some locals decided to hold an impromptu trial on the beach and since the unfortunate animal was unable to answer their questions (and many locals were unaware of what a Frenchman may look like) they concluded that the monkey was in fact a French spy and had it put to death.

In the list of nicknames there are no Great Tits I notice, although it is almost certain that most clubs, or their players, will be referred to as such at some time during a season.  In the world of Rugby League Hull Kingston Rovers are called the Robins and so is the Swindon speedway team.

Other famous Robins are the Boy Wonder in the Batman comics, the Robin Reliant car and of course our most famous hero of Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood!  There is a story that in the DC comic ‘Batman’ the name ‘Robin the Boy Wonder’ was inspired by the Errol Flynn movie ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ but other theories about Robin’s origin have instead often said the name comes from the bird, which neatly explains the red tunic.

This is my dad’s page about Robins:

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Other posts about birds:

Blackbirds

Collared Doves

Dunnock

Fat Balls

Mozart’s Starling

Robin

Seagull

Starlings

Starlings in the USA

Vinkensetting

_____________________________________________

British Birds – The Sparrow

Not exclusively British of course because they are found all over the World but according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds the population of house sparrows in Britain has fallen by nearly 70% in the past thirty years, it is rarely seen in London anymore and there are fewer in urban back gardens and this decline in numbers is now so serious that the sparrow is on the RSPB red list of conservation importance.

Their web site explains that the UK’s birds can be split in to three categories of conservation importance – red, amber and green.  Red is the highest conservation priority, with species needing urgent action. Amber is the next most critical group, followed by green.  Also on the red list are the Thrush and the Starling but happily on the green list are the blackbird, the blue tit, the wren and the robin.

While watching the birds I noticed that some of the sparrows looked very different indeed and when I consulted my book of garden birds I realised that I hadn’t been paying enough attention to detail because there were three types of different bird that I had been generally referring to as sparrows and it turns out that one isn’t even a sparrow at all!  It’s a Dunnock!

First of all (picture 1) there is the tree sparrow, which is smaller than the more common house sparrow and quite different in appearance. It has a chestnut brown head and nape (rather than grey), and white cheeks and collar with a contrasting black cheek-spot.  It is on the red list and is only really found down the east of the country and not in Wales or the southwest at all.  I am really pleased to see them here because based on the Common Bird Census, there was a decline of 85% in numbers in Britain between the two breeding periods (1968-72 and 1988-91), which was the largest decline of any common species during this period.  Little is known about the factors affecting numbers of tree sparrows, but their recent decline has occurred at the same time as decreases in the numbers of other farmland birds which share its diet of grass, wildflower and cereal seeds, and also feed their young on insects and it is therefore possible that its decline is due to changing agricultural practices.

Next (picture 2) is the good old house sparrow which is much more numerous and found all over the British Isles.  They are noisy and gregarious and are cheerful and welcome visitors to the bird table and the feeders.  There may seem to a lot of house sparrows and their numbers are estimated at thirteen million, but the worrying fact is that thirty years ago there were twenty five million and the population in London has declined by a whopping 70%.  That’s something to be concerned about!  No one really knows why but some of the suggestions are that new house building methods and materials make it difficult for sparrows to find suitable nesting sites and the current fad for overly tidy gardens also takes away some of their natural habitat.  So I say forget about clinically tidy gardens and leave some wildlife friendly area in the garden and welcome the sparrow back!  I think the RSPB will agree with me.

Finally (picture 3), there is the Dunnock, which I am certain I must have seen before but am embarrassed to say that I have previously failed to identify him correctly.  He looks like a sparrow but he isn’t, even if sometimes he is referred to as the hedge sparrow.  It is a small brown and grey bird and quite quiet and unobtrusive with better manners than the squabbling sparrows, I have often seen it on its own, creeping along the edge of flower beds or amongst the shrubs, moving with a rather nervous, shuffling gait, often flicking its wings as it goes.  They are more edgy and aware than the sparrows and often disappear abruptly when disturbed.

I know a bit more about sparrows now and a lot more than I did in 1961 when I wrote about them in my school Nature Studies exercise book…

The Seagull Has Landed

Seagulls may well be a feature of the seaside but when I moved to Grimsby I didn’t expect to get a pair nesting on my roof!

It started about two months ago when birds started to appear in the area and could be seen on chimney stacks along the road but I didn’t think a great deal about it.  Then five or six weeks ago I came across a broken egg shell in the garden and using my book of common British Birds I was able to identify it as the egg of a Herring Gull and all of a sudden I began to understand why I had been sweeping up twigs and nest building material from all around the house over the last couple of weeks and it became obvious that a nesting pair had chosen my chimney as the perfect place to raise a family!

This still wasn’t too much of an inconvenience and I watched them daily until finally the eggs hatched and two chicks appeared – then the problems started.

Firstly the noise every morning at four o’clock as it got light and the parents took it in turns to go looking for food and announced their departure and arrival to and from the chimney pots with their familiar loud squawking calls which meant a succession of unexpected early wake ups.

  

Secondly the neighbours who kept knocking on the door and telling me I’d got house guests each one as though telling me something that I didn’t know already and then my roof suddenly became something like the Television programme ‘Springwatch’ and I was conscious that several pairs of binoculars were trained on the house which meant I had to be sure to put my trousers on before wandering around in the mornings!

Finally protective parenting has made my back garden a virtual no-go area.  The birds have grown to quite a substantial size and there is no room in the nest for both chicks and the parents so one adult birds stays on permanent sentry duty on the roof of the house next door and anytime I go in the garden it starts to sound a repetitive clucking alarm call which seems to alert other seagulls nearby and within seconds there are half a dozen of them circling the garden and making an awful din.  A couple of them are quite aggressive and will swoop down as though attacking and a few times I have been nervous enough to beat a hasty retreat back into the house.

Unfortunately I can expect them to be there for another couple of weeks or so because although they are quite large now and have an impressive wing span they seem to be showing no inclination to fly away so I have to continue to put up with the inconvenience.  They are protected of course which means I can’t take action against them without being in breach of the Wildlife and Countryside Acts and the really bad news is that these things live for a very long time and may well come back again next year.

Daily they young birds get more adventurous and extend their wings and peer over the edge of the chimney, eventually the first one leaps and like a piece of falling masonry broken from the stack it falls gracelessly into the garden where it sits for a moment or two dealing with the surprise change of environment.  After a while almost as though some primeval sense of danger inherent in its cunning brain urges it to move to a less vulnerable position and so it flapped its awkward wings and half flying, half jumping repositioned itself on the bonnet of my car where it stayed for an hour or so and obligingly let me take these photographs.

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Other posts about birds:

Blackbirds

Collared Doves

Dunnock

Fat Balls

Mozart’s Starling

Robin

Starlings

Starlings in the USA

Vinkensetting

_____________________________________________

British Birds – The Wren

I like the Wren and would like to encourage them to pass by more often and I have put a wren box in a yew tree in the hope that this might encourage him to nest here.  Although I don’t see them very often Wrens are among the most common birds in the UK, and according to the RSPB there are currently around ten million pairs.

They suffer from heavy losses during the winter though because food can become hard to come by for them.  In the most recent coldest winter, 1962/3 there wasn’t a frost-free night from 22^nd December until 5^th March.    The continuous freezing temperatures meant that snow cover lasted for over two months and the winter of 1962/63 was the coldest over England and Wales since 1740 with mean maximum temperatures for January and February 1963 more than 5 °C below the average.

Seventy-five per cent of British wrens were thought to have died during the harsh winter of 1962-3.  That is why it is important to feed them in cold weather.  They suffer from cold because at a length of less than ten centimetres they are the second smallest birds in the UK, after the Goldcrest.  Because it may be difficult to catch spiders and I am not going to do it for them a handful of grated cheese is the usual recommendation.

The food needs to put on the ground and their scientific name explains why, it is taken from the Greek word “troglodytes”, from “trogle” a hole, and “dyein” to creep, which literally means “cave-dweller” and refers to its habit of disappearing into cavities or crevices whilst searching for spiders or to roost.

Another interesting fact about the Wren is that it has an enormous voice for its size, ten times louder, weight for weight, than a cockerel, so try and imagine, if you can, a cock-a-doodle-doo with that sort of vocal power!

In the Spring the male Wren builds several nests, as many as six or seven and then invites a female to select her favourite. These are called cock nests but are never completely finished or lined until the female chooses the one she wants.  I suppose that is a bit like a man building a house and leaving the decoration and soft furnishings to his wife.

According to European folklore, the Wren is the King of the Birds.  Long ago the birds held a contest to see who could fly the highest; at first it looked as though the Eagle would win easily, but just as the Eagle began to get tired, the Wren, which had cleverly hidden under the Eagle’s tail feathers, crept out and soared far above.

The Wren also features in the legend of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who was supposedly betrayed by the noisy bird as he attempted to hide from his enemies. Traditionally, St. Stephen’s Day on 26^th December has been commemorated by ‘Hunting the Wren’, when young Wrenboys would hunt hedgerows and catch the bird and then ritually parade it around town,

The diminutive Wren also appeared on the last farthings to be minted in the UK from 1948 until 1956 and it ceased to be legal tender from 1960. I don’t know this for sure but I have always assumed that the image of the Wren appeared on the farthing because of the fact that it was such a small coin.  That seems plausible to me anyway.

Shakespeare refers to the wren no fewer than nine times in his different Plays. Its small size is noticed, and the bird is credited with an amount of courage disproportionate to its stature. When Macduff flees to England his wife bitterly complains that he left her and his children without his protection:

“He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch:
for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.”

__________________________________________________

Other Posts about Birds:

Blackbirds

Collared Doves

Dunnock

Fat Balls

Mozart’s Starling

Robin

Starlings

Starlings in the USA

Vinkensetting

__________________________________________________

British Birds – The Dunnock

May has been a good month for birds in the garden and I have seen all of the usual visitors at some time or another as well as the Bullfinch for the first time.

One bird that I am seeing more and more of is the Dunnock, which is a small bird that doesn’t draw a lot of attention to itself and is commonly mistaken for the sparrow.  After a period of decline its numbers are increasing again in the UK and the bird is now on the RSPB amber status list.

It is sometimes called the Hedge Accentor, Hedge Sparrow or Hedge Warbler and you will probably guess from this that it spends a lot of time in hedges and small bushes looking for food.  The Dunnock doesn’t visit the bird table or the feeders, but prefer to pick up food from the ground which has been dropped by other birds.  They seem to be able to go about their business relatively undisturbed because except for competing with the Robin for the same sort of food they don’t seem to be inconveniencing anyone else. It may be for this reason that many people mistake the Dunnock for a female Robin, which it isn’t!

At first sight I suppose you might say that the Dunnock is relatively dull but if they sit still long enough you can see that, as with most birds, this is not the case at all.  Although it is never going to compete with the gaily coloured finches and the tits it really does have quite striking colours especially around its head and collar where the feathers are a very attractive grey-blue and it has white freckle like specks around its inquisitive little eyes.  Despite the first impression the Dunnock is a handsome little bird and he is a welcome visitor to my garden.

I was interested this weekend to see two birds squabbling in the garden with lots of chasing each other about, wing flapping and tail flicking in a competitive sort of way and I have found out why.

An interesting fact about the Dunnock is that this is the swinger of all birds, quite fond of a bit of wife swapping.  Females are polyandrous, breeding with two or more males at once and DNA testing has shown that chicks within broods often have different fathers.  The males too don’t putting it about either and this makes the Dunnock quite rare as this sort of behaviour is only found in about 2% of birds because the majority are monogamous, where one male and one female breed and stay together.  There are more than two million breeding Dunnocks in the UK so that sounds like an awful lot of fun.

Not being absolutely sure who the father of the chicks might be may also account for the fact that It is a common host of the cuckoo and whilst the eggs bear no resemblance to each other the cuckoo eggs are commonly accepted.  I have read that this may be a recent thing because other birds have got better at spotting the cuckoo’s egg but I don’t think it can be so because Shakespeare refers to it in King Lear when the Fool (who is not nearly as daft as he looks) provides an interesting assessment of the betrayal of the King by his daughter Goneril with these lines:

“The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long
That had it’s head bit off by it’s young.” [I, 4]

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Other posts about birds:

Blackbirds

Collared Doves

Dunnock

Fat Balls

Mozart’s Starling

Robin

Seagull

Starlings

Starlings in the USA

Vinkensetting

_____________________________________________

British Birds – The Robin

In 1960 the Times Newspaper conducted a poll to identify Britain’s favourite bird.  Not surprisingly, the Robin had a landslide victory and as a result there was a campaign to have it adopted as Britain’s national bird.  The Government however did not respond to the concept (the Tories were in power at the time and this had no benefit for the rich people in the country) and Britain remains therefore without an official avian representative!  As a sort of consolation the Robin was used as a symbol of a Bird Protection Society, but only for a few years before because this was discontinued after a short while.

Unlike most other woodland and garden birds, the robin rarely migrates abroad and is probably for this reason that we associate them with Christmas, taking a starring role as they do every year on thousands of Christmas cards.  The Robin has also appeared on a complete set of Christmas postage stamps in 1995 and before that in 1966 in a ‘Birds of Britain’ set.

An old English folk tale seeks to explain the Robin’s distinctive red breast and legend has it that when Jesus was dying on the cross, the Robin, then simply brown in colour, flew to his side and sang into his ear in order to comfort him in his pain.  The blood from his wounds stained the Robin’s breast, and after that all Robins got the mark of Christ’s blood upon them.  The robin’s red breast is often assumed to play a role in courtship but in fact it is purely used in defence because despite their distinctly cute appearance Robins are fiercely territorial and will defend their patch to the death.

All the birds of the air                                                                                                                    fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,                                                                                                   when they heard the bell toll                                                                                                      for poor Cock Robin.

In the birds of Shakespeare,  the Robin (or the Ruddock) gets three mentions, in Cymberline, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Henry IV part 1.

Because their home colours are red at least eight English football clubs are nicknamed ‘The Robins’.  Only one other bird is the nickname of more than one club and that is the Magpie, so the Robin is rather over represented in this respect.  Here is my list, but there are probably some more:

West Bromich Albion            Throstles (Song Thrush)

Norwich City                           Canaries

Newcastle United                    Magpies

Notts County                           Magpies

Leeds  United                          Peacocks

Sheffield Wednesday             Owls

Crystal Palace                          Eagles

Cardiff City                               Bluebirds

Swansea City                            Swans

Torquay United                       Gulls

Brighton & Hove                     Seagulls

Kiddermister    Town             Harriers

and the Robins are: Chetenham Town, Swindon Town, Bristol City, Wrexham, Altincham, Ilkeston Town, Bracknell Town and Selby Town!

None of these nicknames though are as interesting as my favourite.  Hartlepool United are known as the Monkeyhangers because during the Napoleonic wars the residents of the town allegedly mistook a monkey for a Frenchman and strung it up from the town gallows.  According to local folklore a French ship was wrecked off the coast and the only survivor was a monkey, wearing a French uniform.  On discovering the monkey, some locals decided to hold an impromptu trial on the beach and since the unfortunate animal was unable to answer their questions (and many locals were unaware of what a Frenchman may look like) they concluded that the monkey was in fact a French spy and had it put to death.

In the list of nicknames there are no Great Tits I notice, although it is almost certain that most clubs, or their players, will be referred to as such at some time during a season.  In the world of Rugby League Hull Kingston Rovers are called the Robins and so is the Swindon speedway team.

Other famous Robins are the Boy Wonder in the Batman comics, the Robin Reliant car and of course our most famous hero of Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood!  There is a story that in the DC comic ‘Batman’ the name ‘Robin the Boy Wonder’ was inspired by the Errol Flynn movie ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ but other theories about Robin’s origin have instead often said the name comes from the bird, which neatly explains the red tunic.

This is my dad’s page about Robins:

_____________________________________________

Other posts about birds:

Blackbirds

Collared Doves

Dunnock

Fat Balls

Mozart’s Starling

Robin

Seagull

Starlings

Starlings in the USA

Vinkensetting

_____________________________________________