Behave like pigs in your garden to attract robins

And when it comes to 'love', it is the female who assesses all the factors and makes the final choice of mate

Robins may be associated with Christmas due to a clever 180-year old marketing campaign. 'The Christmas Morning Post'. London: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1934. National Museums Liverpool

Robins are not at all shy of humans. We love to see them and tend to smile at their compact carriage, cheeky manner, and puffy red breast. But what we often take to be an inclination for companionship — the robin who follows us in the garden or down the lane — is in fact, a robin attached to his territory and who is keenly aware that we present potential opportunities for food.

Each brave little robin who hops from branch to branch alongside us is astutely keeping a close eye on us. From the perspective of a robin, humans are agents of disturbance: we might go digging in the garden, chopping back some plants, or moving buckets about. Each time we do so, wriggly worms are exposed, the perfect opportunity for a robin to jump in a gobble them up quickly.

But it is only in Britain and Ireland that robins behave in such a tame manner. In continental Europe, robins are far more reclusive, keeping themselves to woodlands and out of the way of humans. 

Robins evolved with an approach to feeding that depends on larger mammals — they follow wild boar about in order to feed on the invertebrates unearthed as boar dig and scrape in woodland soils. In Britain and Ireland, however, we don’t have wild boar any longer, and robins have learned to follow us instead. As far as your friendly garden is concerned, we are worth following because we behave like pigs.

A robin on the icy grass at Farran Wood, County Cork.

Another characteristic of robins that we find endearing is their beautiful singing. Robin’s song is tuneful, delicate and warbling, generally including a distinctive repeated ‘tic tic’ sound. 

Cock robins (males) are one of the few birds who sing right through the winter months, a welcome song when most are silent. Each morning at first light and early and each evening at dusk, robins (and other songbirds like them) are announcing to their neighbours that they are alive; that this is still their territory and no-one else’s.

The link between singing and holding territory is that male robins have to hold territory through the winter and keep singing in order to secure a worthy mate come spring. 20th Century naturalists were of the perspective that having a particularly good territory or an impressive skill for singing would secure the male a wide choice of females to mate with. However, more recent research suggests a subtle difference in the interpretation of this behaviour.

It is now understood that male robins hold territory and sing loudly right through winter to demonstrate to the female that he can offer enough ground to secure abundant food resources for a mate and their brood of chicks. 

Females travel about, evaluating a choice of mates. The female judges the quality of her potential mates based on the quality of the song, his appearance, both of which are indicators of the quality of the territory he holds. It is the female who assesses all the factors and makes the final choice of mate.

Male robins take the holding of territory so seriously that disputes with other competing males can occur. Most disputes are settled with a show of song and assertive body language, though fights between males do break out and can even lead to death.

There are certain ideals we like to associate with Christmas — including peace, compassion and togetherness. These characteristics are distinctly at odds with those of the feisty little robins; yet this is the bird that has somehow become a symbol of Christmas. Many millions of Christmas cards are adorned with a picture of a beautiful robin redbreast together with words such as ‘Peace and Joy this Christmas’. Yet these feathered ambassadors are in truth aggressive, possessive loners; hardly the best representatives of peace, love and charity.

But like many marketing campaigns, the message was designed to be appealing and memorable; biological accuracy was less important. 

The tradition of sending Christmas cards was founded in 1843 by Henry Cole, the first director of the Victoria and Albert museum, and the practice quickly gained momentum. Before long, people were using the postal service to send and receive festive postcards with season’s greetings. The introduction of the ‘penny post’ in 1840 made sending Christmas cards more affordable and thus more popular. So the idea of branding the robin redbreast as a symbol of Christmas was a clever way to promote wide use of the British Postal Service.

Symbolically the association was perfect. At the time, postmen wore smart red coats. The red hue of robin’s red breast and the postmen’s red coats — both seen as messengers — were adopted as a symbol of Christmas that have now become firmly established.

A robin keeps watch over his territory in the Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin. 23/11/2022 Picture: ©Fran Veale Please Credit

Of course, there is no harm in any of this, and sending Christmas cards is still a wonderful way to connect with friends and family over the festive season. Though perhaps a more apt association between Christmas and the Robin redbreast is that mid-winter is a particularly challenging time for small songbirds. They need to eat almost constantly to stay warm and energetic in such cold temperatures. 

Often, snow and ice make soil invertebrates inaccessible. Surviving the winter is a struggle for songbirds. And this is true too for our own kind, many of whom are cold, hungry and struggling at this time of year. The robin on our Christmas cards might be taken as a reminder to put out food for the birds in winter, and to share what we can with fellow humans too.

These cute little creatures, who we love to watch through the kitchen window on frosty December mornings, will always bring a smile to my face. Perhaps there compassion they provoke can be interpreted as a prompt for generosity and kindness to all who are struggling with the harshness of cold mid-winter weather and insufficient food.