Page 62 - World of Animals - Issue #28 Magazine

Robins: heroes or villains?
Bill’s top
three tips for
“In the pecking order, there are not encouraging robins
into your garden:
many that will take on robins – even • Mealworms (also great for
feeding them by hand)
great tits and chaffinches stand back” • Open nest boxes, with a slot
rather than a hole
• A patch of climbing
ivy left to grow
wild

Robins: the good, of youngsters is very high. It’s lovely seeing the juveniles growing up, learning to fly and
the bad and the ugly their red breast appearing before your eyes. The other side of robins, of course, is that
they don’t like one another!
Former Goodies star, writer and broadcaster Bill Oddie is one of Britain’s
best-loved ornithologists. As well as hosting many wildlife programmes Tell us more about their darker side…
over his career, he is an ambassador for numerous birding and conservation societies. Well, they don’t like anybody except the person feeding them. Presumably they like their
partner for a couple of weeks but they don’t exactly hang around. And they don’t like their
Why do you think the robin was voted Britain’s favourite bird? kids for long either. So, most of the time – and I think people who voted for them need to
It shows how egocentric we humans are really: we only like things that like us! The understand this – they don’t set a good example. They are crazy possessives! As soon as
robin is the garden bird that comes to you – quite literally. Plus many people think you’ve gone past that breeding stage, they’ll be chasing one another. Particularly come
they’ve got the same robin for years on end; I hate to disillusion you, but I don’t think you autumn, they will not sit and share food. In the pecking order, there are not many that will
have! It’s a curious fact about the biology of robins that females and males are virtually take on robins – even great tits and chaffinches stand back.
indistinguishable. Not only do they look the same, but unlike most songbirds, the female
also sings. So I can understand why people might think they’ve got the same robin So they’re intolerant of other birds too?
coming back. They’re intolerant of everything. Even when it comes to their own kids. Once you’ve got
Something I don’t think everyone realises is that some robins aren’t even faithful to past the stage of “Okay, you can fly now”, they seem determined to boot them out. I don’t
one country. We get a fair number from Scandinavia and the continent. So though it’s think they have a magnanimous bone in their little bodies!
been voted Britain’s favourite bird, your garden robin may not actually be British! It was two robins locked in mortal combat. One had pinned another on its back and was
The other day, I was watching telly and suddenly there was a great scuffling outside.
© Dreamstime; Corbis; Alamy; Thinkstock I’m fortunate to have robins permanently in my garden, so I get to see their lifestyle close place. I think it was only because I got up that they stopped and flew off – probably to
How much interaction do you have with robins?
pecking away at its face and scratching with its talons. There were feathers all over the
up. I’ve got a whole series of plaques around my garden, saying ‘Robins 2006’ and ‘Robins carry on elsewhere.
2007’ because they never nest in the same place twice. Once, I found a very young robin
Do you think robins deserve to be our national bird?
in my shed that could barely fly – it just managed to flutter up to one of the beams and
stayed there for two days. It was such a beautiful little thing. Apart from being all plump
I personally put a plea in for the red grouse which is actually indigenous to Britain. I
and speckled, they’ve also got those little tuŠs of fluff which make them so endearing.
thought it would be a very good idea if the red grouse were our official national bird,
I’m always excited to see when robins have had a reasonable year, because the mortality
62 because then it wouldn’t be so easy for people to hunt them. But they didn’t go for that.