UPDATE: The robin and the blue tit both feature in my free 10-bird ebook sampler “Chasing Wild Geese”. Send me an email [email protected] to get the link for the PDF.
Well, the blue tits didn’t settle in our birdbox, but a family of robins (Erithacus rubecula) set up home in some ivy on the fence at the rear of the garden. The chicks have been making their high-pitched “feed me now” tweets for a few days. Just now, noticed one on the lawn with two parents in frequent attendance. They’re fast moving and in the shade so quite hard to get a sharp photo, but here goes. One of the chick alone and another post-prandial with parent.
Robins used to be classed as part of the thrush family, Turdidae, but they have been reclassified as chats (old world flycatchers). The American robin is definitely still a thrush though Turdus migratorius and strikingly different to the European robin, but both have the famous “red” breast, which is, of course, orange, because there was no word for that colour until the 16th century (hence redhead, red shank, red admiral, all prominently orange!); we had the fruit by 1300 but didn’t call the colour orange until much later.