Self-reliant robins
Slowly but surely we are plunging towards autumn.
It is not so much that the trees are turning to gold or red yet, although the birches at least are showing signs of yellowing, as the sounds that echo the feeling of the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Wherever I venture it is the voice of cock robin I hear. Little musical phrases are blurted out from every airt, it sometimes seems almost involuntarily. I often think that the autumnal and winter vocalisations of redbreast are afterthoughts, as if the notes suddenly leap out before the brain is properly in gear.
Robins are confidants, prepared to live cheek-by-jowl with us. They perch cheekily on the handles of temporarily abandoned forks or spades, waiting for us to turn up worms as we dig our gardens. They are constant presence, often at remarkably close quarters.
Their music is unquestionably sweet and certainly adds a cheerful dimension to autumn and winter days for often their songs are the only ones to be heard. Thus those sweet notes seem especially loud and clear.
However much they beguile us, their singing has a more decisive purpose. Sweet it may be yet it is also belligerent for cock robin stakes out his territory as resolutely in the autumn as he does in the spring. Redbreast winter feeding territories are defended just as zealously as spring breeding territories.
Few birds acquire and defend territory with quite as much ferocity as robins. I’m sure readers will have seen on television a felt model of a robin being placed in a resident robin’s territory. The occupant attacks his inanimate rival with such gusto that the model is literally torn to pieces. Robins are clearly gladiatorial in the extreme.
When real battle over territory ensues robins fight mercilessly and sometimes so fiercely that it can result in the death of one of the adversaries.
The only other song you may hear as the days shorten is that amazing flourish of notes that jenny wren utters. These two birds seem to be inextricably linked, both in folklore and in reality, the only two birds that sing all winter long.
The ebb and flow of avian life has taken many birds away from us and to the south during recent days. As insect life here diminishes so the bulk of migrants pack their bags and head off for Mediterranean shores or Africa for their winter holidays.
A few, like house martins attending to late broods, remain into the early days of autumn but soon they too will be gone.
Yet our skies will not exactly be empty or silent. Any day now we might hear the evidence that migration is by no means a one-way street. The cackling of the first vanguard of wintering pink-footed geese may well ring out across our landscapes during these next few days.
I guess nobody would suggest that the vocalisation of wintering geese represents song. More is it the sound of continuous vocal contact, mostly between related geese. Geese are extremely familya orientated. Those smaller skeins that pattern our skies once the bulk of them have arrived comprise almost exclusively of related birds. While the vanguard, mostly non-breeding birds, usually arrives in mid-September it will be October before the great skeins containing this year’s new generation of pink-feet arrive.
The geese are utterly committed to communal life throughout their lives but many birds resort to corporate lifestyles as winter approaches.
Finches and tits throw aside their individuality as the days shorten and food sources begin to diminish.
Close observation of the birds that visit your gardens will almost certainly reveal a retention of some individuality on the part of some birds. For example, cock chaffinches show that they retain some of their macho feelings as little spats are acted out between individuals. These spats may diminish as winter starts to take hold because then finding adequate supplies of food and survival becomes the main priorities.
This coming together demonstrates safety in numbers. Many pairs of eyes working as one unit have a much better chance of finding food sources. Similarly, of course, many pairs of eyes are a useful means of detecting potential threats such as predators. It is also the case that the swirling mass of a flock serves to confuse predators.
The discipline of a flock when it flies is coordinated by the recognition of white flashes on plumage which act as guidance features and by calls that are specialised. Just as geese are constantly making vocal contact with each other, in mixed flocks of finches contact calls are repeatedly made.
Meanwhile, cock robin stays oblivious to such temptations, remaining utterly aloof , dedicated to the life of an individual and definitely a solo flyer.