Robins are plump and chunky birds with bright orange-red breast, face and throat. Their cheeks are edged with grey and have a white belly and olive-brown upper parts. They have a brown bill and legs. They are about 13 to 14 cm in length, weigh 16 to 22 g and have the wingspan of 20 to 22 cm. Both male and female Robins look very similar. Mostly the brown forehead is ‘V’ shaped in females and ‘U’ shaped in males.

Robins are territorial all year round. They usually defend their territories to the death. Robins have territoriality for breeding during spring and summer seasons. But at other times, individual robins hold territories for feeding.

Robins can usually be heard singing their melodious warbling song that sounds like “twiddle-oo, twiddle-eedee, twiddle-oo twiddle”. Around Christmastime, the song becomes stronger. They will sing all through the night. So they are often mistaken as a Nightingale.

Hunting Styles

Robins often catch their preys by following a gardener that is digging the soil over for an easy picking. They forage primarily on the ground for soft-bodied invertebrates, and finds worms by sight, pouncing on them and then pulling them up. They also snatch the preys on the ground after watching for movement from a perch above. Robins, both males and females, hold their own separate feeding territories in the winter, which they defend vigorously.

Favourite Food

Robins generally feed on a mixture of both wild and cultivated fruits. Their favourite diet is worms and insects like beetles, caterpillars and grasshoppers. Often, they also eat sunflower hearts.

Their Homes

Robins habitat are woodland and more open farmland and urban areas. They are common in almost all habitats except for large, dry, cultivated fields, alpine rocks and ice, and dense, unbroken rainforest. They are mainly the birds of fields, open woodlands and forest edges.

Nesting

Robins typically build the nest on the horizontal branch of a tree, 6 to 25 feet above the ground. Nests are most commonly located in a dense bush or in a fork between two tree branches. The cup-shaped nest is made of long coarse grass, twigs, paper, and feathers, lined with smeared mud and cushioned with fine grass or other soft materials. Nest is usually built by females and males may help sometime.

Young Ones

Their breeding season begins late March. Outside of the breeding season, robins tend to form large flocks, often feeding in berry-producing trees. During the breeding season, robins forage on the ground. They move about by both running and hopping. Females lay about three to five light blue eggs and incubate them alone for 12 to 15 days. Eggs hatch after 14 days and the eyes of the pink featherless nestlings are closed for the first five days. Parents feed the nestlings a diet of earthworms, insects, and berries. The mother continuously takes care of them when they are very young. When they become older, she takes care of them only at night and during bad weathers. Even after leaving the nest, the young ones will follow their parents around and beg food from them. The wings of young birds develop rapidly and it only takes a couple of weeks for them to become proficient at flying. Both parents are active in protecting and feeding the young until they learn to survive on their own.