Pair of robins see red and go into battle
THE robin is a bird in need of a little anger management therapy.
To our eyes and ears the species is undeniably delightful – an attentive species, attractive looking with a sweet song that is delivered throughout the year. Little wonder it was voted Britain’s favourite feathered friend.
And yet on the other hand they are one of the most belligerent of garden birds, prepared to fight to the death to protect their precious territory as if their life depended on it – which in many ways it does.
When it comes to rivals, robins don’t make the best of neighbours.
If angry calls and puffing up the red chest fails to deter an intruder the aggrieved party will resort to fullon assault, with one in ten bouts ending in a fatality.
Reader Lisa MacLeod recently chanced upon such a battling duo near her Mevagissey home.
“I was on my way back from a walk from Mevagissey to Chapel Point around the coast, when I saw a lot of frantic fluttering on the ground, by a hedge, and firstly thought a bit of breeze had picked up, and was blowing dust and leaves about, such was the speed and blurriness of what I could see at first,” she writes.
“So I took out my camera and zoomed in, only to realise, with the flashes of tomato soup red (the robin always reminds me of the colour of lovely Heinz tomato soup!), that it was two robins, having a right old barney, even pinning each other to the floor, such was the intensity of their behaviour.
“After a while I realised why, as they eventually flew off to a fence across the road, and at that point I saw another two robins joining them, so four in all! It looked like all robins survived the kerfuffle in one piece, thankfully, but some serious rivalry going on there. So, I assume they must have been fighting over the ladies!”
Quite a bust-up Lisa witnessed by the sounds of it – and good news they lived to fight another day.
In my own garden the robins not only patrol and defend the invisible borders of their precious patches of territory against other robins, but also try to chase off other birds – with mixed success. Wisely these plucky pugilists choose to take on species their own size – safest to stick to the featherweight division.