American robin

This week's bird is a cheery fellow.

It's a red red robin just bob-bob-bobbin' along.  These birds are ubiquitous at the moment, but they only turn up at the start of spring.  From something I saw on the local news the people hereabouts view their arrival as an indicator that spring has really sprung.

American robins are actually thrushes, just with fancy coats on.  The red breast is a deeper red in the males than the females, which makes it fairly easy to tell them apart and identify pairs.  They like to scour our back lawn for worms.

As you can see the red breast is balanced by quite a dull grey-brown back and a black head, but the overall coloration does make them stand out, even in the trees - as long as they aren't facing away from you, when it can be quite tricky to tell if you're looking a a robin or perhaps something more exotic.

They don't make a lot of noise during the day but they do have a complicated song which is part of the dawn chorus. Mrs Walles and I have also heard them singing in the evening.  One quite surprised us by starting up just outside our open front door recently, not least because we seldom actually see them as they sing.  We weren't sure what kind of bird was making the noise but when I poked my head out the door I saw it was a robin sitting on the lawn singing his little heart out.  I didn't notice any of the throbbin' mentioned in the song...but I guess that was just to make the rhyme work, anyway.