{"id":2836,"date":"2011-04-19T22:20:02","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T04:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=2836"},"modified":"2016-11-25T08:11:20","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T14:11:20","slug":"a-robins-many-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/2836","title":{"rendered":"A Robin’s Many Songs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Anyone who listens thoughtfully to robins can’t help but bubble with questions about why robins are the way they are.
\n–Donald Kroodsma, The Singing Life of Birds<\/em>, p. 37<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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American Robin along the Platte River, Nebraska, 3\/22\/2010. Photo by Len Blumin (Creative Commons 2.0).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The American Robin may be the most familiar bird in North America, but for all its abundance and approachability, it remains in some ways inscrutable.\u00a0 Back in 1979, in his classic Stokes Guide to Bird Behavior<\/em>, Donald Stokes wrote that robin courtship displays remained a mystery, and might not exist at all.\u00a0 The song he called an “enigma,” pointing out that it did not appear to correlate with courtship or territoriality, instead peaking right before the young hatch in any given brood.<\/p>\n

Some studies in the 1990s provided evidence that robin song is indeed correlated with courtship and territoriality, but they did not make any attempt to describe the song comprehensively.\u00a0 That task fell to Donald Kroodsma in his popular 2005 book The Singing Life of Birds<\/em>.\u00a0 Each male robin, Kroodsma explained, has in his repertoire 6-20 simple, whistled “caroling” phrases and 75-100 high-pitched, complex “hisselly” phrases.\u00a0 The familiar daytime song is often made up purely of caroling phrases:<\/p>\n