Robins and Rain

Range: 12-17 degrees C,

~4 p.m. 16.3 degrees C, humidity 67% and rising, wind SW 7 kt.

About midday sunbird singing beautifully in the Bauhinia right outside my window again:)

Bulbuls vocal, Hooded crow first bird heard today, not sure when, between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. House sparrows very vocal about 4 p.m. as usual.

Set out just after four.. sky mostly overcast with ragged cumulus but the ones coming in were looking more serious, undersides dark grey and crimsonish in the late afternoon light.

Soon it was drizzling but there was plenty life in one relatively young pine tree by the valley road and I wouldn't tear myself away till I'd seen as much as possible in it because of the call I was hearing. It was a clear and familiar 'tic!, tic!' which meant European robin! (Erithacus rubecula)

American robins are more closely related to our blackbirds (Turdus merula), similar in size and 'jizz', European robins are smaller and much more closely resemble chats and redstarts in their perky, flicky jizz, and bubble over in character, cheeky and bold !

Robins are two a penny in the U.K. When I took my eldest daughter to South Wales (this time of year, some years ago) she was amazed at how many robins we were seeing out in the open, busy on almost every hedge. Here they're only winter visitors and that gives them extra specialness to me. Perhaps there's a bit of nostalgia there for me too:) As regular readers will know, I've been waiting for that first robin of the season for weeks, and I didn't care that my nose, sweater and hat were getting wet. My field glasses first found a beautiful tiny Philloscopus warbler (most probably Chiffchaff, P. collybita) foraging in the upper twigs, olive green and pale yellow with clear eye stripe, a nice sighting but that wasn't what was 'ticking'. More frantic searching.. a great tit busy foraging in the middle of the pine, being very quiet about it. Suddenly, after a few more minutes there it was! It flew down to a clump of vegetation at the edge of valley road and I had my glimpse, flicking and perky on the ground, brown and the tiniest hint of orangey red, he had his back to me, and then he was off again, back up into another pine.

Ahhh! Another search of the dense branches yielded three more enchanting Philloscopus
warblers busy foraging and now calling in a squeaky whistle to other warblers in another pine across valley road. Husband noticed them flitting to and fro across the road and guessed there must have been at least half a dozen of the little jobs in the immediate area.

The robin darted across the road, behind some ragwort and into the low branches of a pine there and then frustratingly the ticking ceased and we searched in vain for any movement, now there were scores of trees to search. We did hear redstart whistles from the pines as well as some quite vocal graceful warblers.

As I searched, I tried to reassure husband, who was constantly glancing up at the grey ominous clouds, that it was only raining 'a bit' LOL

A widely straggled flock of at least twenty hooded crows were returning to roost from forage in the north and we heard a jackdaw as we headed into the buildings. Some Eurasian Jays were also noisy in the forest.

Now of course I won't feel fully satisfied till I see a decent view of the whole bird but today it's a 'rain check' since shortly after that the rain really started coming down and we had to find the quickest shortcut back from valley road to the back of the buildings. As we hurried through the rain I couldn't resist quipping to husband, 'now you know why there are so many robins in England!'