Robin is cock of the walk
appearance in the City of Glasgow’s coat of arms.
This elevated position emanated from an ancient account of St Kentigern, the eventual Bishop of Glasgow and founder of the city’s cathedral in the 6th century, who as a much-favoured student – the “teacher’s pet” - of St Serf at Culross on the River Forth, thus incurred the jealousy of his fellow students.
Kentigern apparently kept a tame robin, which in a fit of jealous rage, his colleagues killed. However, Kentigern promptly restored it back to life from whence it was honoured in that coat of arms as a “robin proper”!
So this is the benign robin which, along with the wren, provides those much welcome bursts of cheerful and melodious song on what may otherwise be the silent and darkest of autumn and winter days.
The cheery, sweet singing redbreast however, is not quite the benign little soul we think him to be.
He may be regarded widely as the deliverer of good news, especially around the festive season, in his guise as a postman, a caricature gained because the early postmen were dressed in vermilion waistcoats and were thus dubbed “robins”.
Indeed many Christmas card images actually depict the robin carrying an envelope in its beak a la postman.
However, the truth about the robin’s lifestyle rather contradicts this highly favourable image.
I doubt if there is a bird, which defends its territory more doughtily. His sweet sounding bell-like voice, often uttered with a deceptively beguiling vehemence, is in fact a serious warning to any would-be rival cock robins. In essence those little blurted out phrases are saying: “This is my territory. Keep out … or else!”
All birds proclaim territorial integrity during the spring – for that is essentially what birdsong is all about.
But Cock Robin, along with Jenny Wren, also proclaims winter feeding territory with almost as much vigour as when he announces his breeding territory in the spring. Furthermore, he really does mean what he says!
Any trespasser is quickly engaged in physical conflict and that conflict can literally be fought to the death of one of the protagonists. Cock robins are certainly not shrinking violets!
And to prove that cock robins are serious about the defence of territory, try putting out an imitation robin in your local robin’s patch.
It is like the waving of a red rag to a bull, except that bulls do not see red for they are colour blind. The robin by contrast certainly sees red and will literally tear the red-breasted imitation to shreds!
And the same fate can befall a young cock robin when it attempts to establish a territory of its own on another, more senior robin’s domain!
Currently I have two robins belling away in distinctly separate parts of my garden. Thus, there is an everpresent vocal competition between these two residents, although so far each has remained firmly “at home”. The boundary between territories is, to them at least, clearly defined.
Maybe a particular tree or some other landmark defines the strictly defined border between their respective territories … although it is to me an otherwise invisible line, But one which neither occupant can cross without dire consequence!
I can only guess by virtue of the various stations from whence the music comes, which particular bit of my garden belongs to whom!
So, there is more to “Bob Robin”, as he is said traditionally to be called in this airt, than meets the eye.
Jenny Wren may give us a few flurries of his dynamic song from time to time yet despite his vocal power he never seems quite as assertive or persistent about his territorial integrity as his redbreasted mate.
Nor does he ever seem to express the level of belligerence that lurks within the breast of cock robin. Nevertheless our winter days would be the poorer for the absence of all this unbridled aggression.
It is easy to cast aside the knowledge that those gorgeous little passages of bell-like music, so welcome to our ears on the dullest of winter days, are issued as a potent threat to other robins.
Let us therefore rejoice in the singular and accomplished songs of the robin, even if they seem to be blurted out randomly!
Bob robin is our cheeriest and our most musical neighbour, always alert and apparently friendly, happy to live cheek by jowl with us … but very definitely not with other cock robins!