Robin Tales.

You remember the baby robin I mentioned recently, the precocious one that was behaving more like an adult than a baby robin is supposed to behave? I noticed yesterday that he isn’t only feisty with other small birds, he’s now being feisty with adult robins, and the adult robins are giving him a wide berth.

I think this kid must be either on his last incarnation as a bird and now be in training for his next life as a Bengal Tiger, or he was a Hell’s Angel in a past life and is now serving his sentence. Either way, I’m getting a bit concerned about when he’s going to turn his aggression on me:

Give us some oats or the kid gets it.

‘The kid gets it?’

Yeah. You heard what I said.

‘But you are the kid.’

Oh, right… erm… Give us some oats or I’ll poop in your beer. C’mon. Make with the oats, Buster, or the Italian lager gets it, ice cold or not.

*  *  *

And now for something completely different:

There are two adult robins which frequently visit my bird table together, and they nearly always engage in the same routine. One picks up a piece of rolled oat and waits for the other to notice. When the other one does, the first one hands over the food.

Now, male and female robins are indistinguishable but I have a theory. Well, two theories actually. I suspect that the donor is male and the recipient female, and the reason the male engages in this apparently selfless behaviour is either that he’s trying to court the female’s affection and female robins are unimpressed by flowers, chocolates, or iced spritzers in some smart café bar after work, or he’s practicing for when he has to feed her while she’s sitting eggs.

Either way, it’s a most engaging practice to watch.