Life

Take on Nature: The robin appears gentle to us but is fierce with its own

The robin's babbled notes frequently descend around us to proclaim the year is waning but also to reassure us, it will sing come what may
The robin's babbled notes frequently descend around us to proclaim the year is waning but also to reassure us, it will sing come what may The robin's babbled notes frequently descend around us to proclaim the year is waning but also to reassure us, it will sing come what may

THE opening lines from William Blake’s lengthy poem Auguries of Innonence, ‘A Robin Redbreast in a cage/Puts all Heaven in a rage’, came to me recently when a robin followed me closely as I tidied summer’s work in the garden.

I’ve written of the bird before here but in the different context of its ties with the festive season and Christ’s crucifixion. One of our most recognisable birds, Erithacus rubecula is well known for following the gardener as spade or trowel turn the soil, offering the prospect of worms and insects, and although my robin was, no doubt, availing of the chance to find some morsel, there seemed more to its attendance than that.

So close at times, I could almost touch it, the bird offered a kind of companionship, a little like the one in John Clare’s poem The Woodman where the robin, ‘With ruddy bosom and simple face / Around his old companion fearless hops’. Clare also calls the robin, ‘the tamest of the feathered race’. Now past the autumn equinox, its babbled notes frequently descend around us to proclaim the year is waning but also to reassure us, it will sing come what may.

Trusting and gentle as the robin appears to us, it is fiercely aggressive when defending territories against its own, especially in spring but also throughout the year. If its assertive singing doesn’t work the robin will fly close to another bird, fluffing up its red breast in a threatening display, before battling the bird off if necessary.

Evolutionary biologist David Lack, in his book Life of the Robin (1953), writes of the series of experiments he carried out to demonstrate the importance of the colour red in repelling robin intruders. The author placed a stuffed robin close to a wild one, which it attacked savagely, but only when it contained red feathers.

Similar experiments showed that when the stuffed bird was painted all brown, it was no longer attacked. His book was and remains an important work in helping us understand many aspects of robin behaviour and its life cycle.

Interestingly, Lack’s interest and motivation to carry out research on the robin stemmed from previous work on the bird and its habits by a Co Fermanagh-based civil engineer James Parsons Burkitt. A native of Killybegs, Co Donegal, Burkitt was an experienced field ornithologist who designed and conducted a pioneering population study of the robin, based on ringing individuals in his garden in the early 1920s.

His work was to prove highly significant as it enabled individual birds to be identified in the field and details of their territorial behaviour, song and threat display recorded.

Berkitt, the son of a Presbyterian minister proved the longevity of one female robin which he ringed in December 1927, near Ballinamallard and which he trapped again in July 1938, at least 11 years old, "the oldest living robin in the world" at the time.

Voted Ireland’s favourite bird in 2015 and Britain’s more recently, in 2019, an spideog, as Gaeilge, will stay with us in our open spaces, towns and cities to enliven darker days with its red breast and reflective song.

Clare also wrote of the bird in his poem, The Autumn Robin saying, 'Sweet little bird in russet coat, The livery of the closing year, / The song thy little joys repeat / My loneliness relieves.’

Although the robin’s song becomes more forlorn as the weeks go by, I suspect we’ll still want and need to hear it more than ever as a beacon of hope in what remain difficult and challenging times.