BIRDS OF NANTUCKET
ROBIN, THRUSH, OR BLACKBIRD
by Kenneth Turner Blackshaw
As I write this I'm hearing a whinnying at the window. Stepping outside I realize the sound is coming from all around me. These are avian whinnies rather than equine ones. Our American Robins are now sparring for territory.

American Robin

Those of you who are out and about during Nantucket's winter are undoubtedly saying, "What's new about this? Robins have been here through all the cold months." It's a good point you are making. Our robin redbreasts spend the winter here in good numbers. Our Christmas Bird Counts have averaged 2,000 of them over the past few years. But something different is driving our robins now.

Robins are "Birding 101" birds. Most everyone knows them but only birders really look at them in detail. You have to learn robins well in order to pick out an unusual bird that may be with them.

Robins are one of our birding yardsticks. (As an aside, my son-in-law recently pointed out to me that modern day households no longer have yardsticks. They use tape measures instead - but you know what I mean.) Beginning birders learn that a robin is ten inches from beak to tail. Very handy when you compare another bird to it. A House Sparrow is six inches; a Blue Jay is a foot; a crow is 20 inches - birding yardsticks.

Our early European settlers missed the birds from home and quickly assigned the 'robin' name to this bird. Strangely they might have called it a 'blackbird.' The American Robin's scientific name is Turdus migratorius, literally a wandering thrush. The very familiar Blackbird in Europe (a la four and twenty) is Turdus merula. This name could be translated as blackbird thrush but merula has more significance than that, having been the name of one of the more influential family groups in ancient Rome.

Getting back to the genus Turdus, the fact that these two bird species share the name indicates they are very closely related. If you spend time in an English garden you will be charmed by the Blackbird's behavior. They run along the lawns hunting for worms just like our American Robins do. Many of their vocalizations will remind you of the birds from home. Our robin's territorial call "Cheerup - Cheerily" is not part of their repertoire though.

The European Robin is a much more difficult bird to see. Its behavior is very retiring. It's a tiny bird, smaller than a House Sparrow. Now it's considered to be in the flycatcher family but when the Swedish naturalist, Linnaeus, named it in the 1700s he made it a wagtail. About the only thing it shares with our American Robin is its red breast!

Given all this you might think that our American blackbirds are thrushes as well - wrong, featherbreath! Although they reminded the early settlers of the blackbirds back home, they are related only by physical appearance. Their behavior, eating habits and certainly their songs are very different and place them in their own family, with orioles for heaven's sake!

Back to the robins and what's driving this change in their behavior. They are early and hardy nesters. Are these the same birds that have wintered with us, subsisting on holly, cedar and privet? Yes and no! Robins are extremely migratory but not all robins migrate. So some of our winter robins are part of the black-backed race, down from the boreal forest. In Florida, robins are a sign of winter, arriving by the millions in October to spend the winter and becoming intoxicated feasting on the fruit of the Brazilian Pepper bushes.

Are the American Robins whinnying outside my window just arrived from southern climes or have they been hobnobbing with the northern robins here all winter? Very good question. Certainly the early bird can often claim the best nesting site and gain advantage over its peers. Probably most of the thousands that winter here are already heading north but you never can be sure that the earliest nesters haven't been lurking here all winter.

In the next weeks we'll see them carrying mud in their beaks from which to fashion their tree-limb nests. They are often incubating eggs during our April spring snowstorms and we are always amazed and charmed to find very vocal baby robins on our lawns in early May.

It's these youngsters that confirm the American Robin's thrush connections. They carry the speckled breast of their thrush cousins just like another thrush does, the American Bluebird.

The names by which we know our birds are sometimes complicated and confusing. Robins may be thrushes or flycatchers. Blackbirds may be thrushes and American blackbirds more like orioles. When you are outside over the next weeks, listen for the sounds of spring and enjoy the change of season. Imagine the complicated processes our feathered neighbors are going through, claiming territory, building nests and rearing young. Best of all listen to their songs that proclaim the system is working again,

for one more year. I

George C. West creates illustrations for these articles. If you enjoy 'social' birding, join the Nantucket Bird Club at 8 a.m. Sundays in front of Nantucket High School for a two to three hour birding trip. Call 228-1693 for more information. To hear about rare birds, or to leave a bird report call the Massachusetts Audubon hot line at 1-781-259-8805. Find more about Birding Nantucket on the web at http://k-blackshaw. com/BN/BN.htm.