Birds
American Robin
Turdus migratorius · also called robin, North American robin
The American robin is the bird most North Americans learn first — the plump, upright, orange-breasted thrush hopping across the lawn, head cocked, hunting worms. It is abundant from the Arctic to Mexico, and its song is woven into the idea of spring itself.
Overview
American robins live across essentially all of North America, in a huge range of open and semi-open habitats: lawns, parks, gardens, orchards, farmland, forest clearings, and, in winter, fruiting woodland and swamp. They are partial migrants — birds from the far north move south in winter, but robins overwinter as far north as southern Canada wherever there is fruit to eat, shifting from lawns to woods and forming large roving flocks.
A diet in two halves
The robin’s year splits its diet in two:
- Spring and summer: a hunter of earthworms, beetle grubs, caterpillars, and other soil and ground invertebrates, found by a run-stop-and-tilt technique that uses both sight and hearing.
- Autumn and winter: a fruit specialist, eating the berries of dozens of native and introduced plants — sometimes to the point of intoxication when the fruit has fermented.
Song and breeding
The robin’s song — a long, liquid series of rising and falling phrases, delivered from a high perch before dawn — is one of the first and most persistent of the year in the north, which is why it is treated as the sound of spring. Pairs are seasonally monogamous. The female builds a sturdy cup nest, cemented with mud, in a tree fork, on a ledge, or on a building, and lays three to five “robin’s-egg blue” eggs. Robins are prolific, raising two or three broods a season, though nest predation is heavy and only about a quarter of fledglings survive their first year.
A misnamed bird
The American robin is a true thrush, closely related to the Eurasian blackbird, not to the small European robin it was nostalgically named after. It is one of many North American birds given a familiar European name by settlers on the basis of a superficial resemblance.
Status
The American robin is Least Concern, one of the most numerous birds on the continent (roughly 370 million), and increasing. It thrives in human-modified landscapes — suburban lawns are ideal worm habitat — and its main risks are the everyday hazards of that life: window collisions, cats, vehicle strikes, and pesticides on lawns and in the invertebrates it eats. It was historically hunted for food in large numbers before migratory-bird protection laws.
American Robin: common questions
How does an American robin find worms?
With sight and sound. A hunting robin runs a few steps across a lawn, stops, and tilts its head to bring one eye to bear on the ground, watching for the tiny movements of soil that betray a worm just below the surface. Experiments have shown robins also use hearing, detecting the faint sounds a worm makes moving through its burrow, and can find prey by ear even when they cannot see or smell it. Once a worm is located, the robin seizes the end and pulls it out in a smooth, steady tug.
Can robins really get drunk on berries?
Yes. In late winter, when insects and worms are scarce, robins rely heavily on fruit, and berries left on the plant into late winter — pyracantha, holly, crabapple, hawthorn, and especially non-native honeysuckle — can ferment, producing alcohol. Flocks that gorge on them show clear signs of intoxication — flying erratically, crashing into windows and cars, falling off perches, and being unable to stand. It usually passes without harm, though drunk robins are more likely to be hit by traffic or caught by cats.
Is the American robin related to the European robin?
No — the resemblance is only the orange breast. The American robin is a large thrush (genus Turdus), closely related to the blackbird and the song thrush of Europe. The European robin is a small chat, unrelated, and much tinier. English colonists in North America named the new bird "robin" out of homesickness because its red breast reminded them of the bird back home, and the name stuck despite the two being very different.
Why is the robin seen as a sign of spring?
Because in the northern United States and Canada its cheerful, carolling dawn song — one of the first and loudest of the year — starts up as the days lengthen, often while snow is still on the ground. In reality many robins never leave; they just switch from conspicuous lawn-foraging in flocks in winter woods to singing, territorial birds spread across gardens in spring. So the "return of the robin" is often a change in behaviour and visibility rather than an actual arrival.