EVERYBODY knows and loves the robin, but despite being our most familiar bird it retains a degree of mystery. Most robins hatched in Britain never move far from their birth-place, but we know that a few fly south in the autumn. One unfortunate bird, ringed in Montgomeryshire, was shot more than 1,600km away in Spain in its first winter. Why do some individuals feel the compulsion to migrate, with all the inherent risks long flights involve, when they are just as likely to survive if they stay at home?
Most British robins are sedentary. In contrast their cousins that breed in Fennoscandia and eastern Europe are highly migratory. They abandon the forests in late summer, migrating to the Mediterranean and even Morocco. Some of these birds pass through Britain but how many remain to winter here? Nobody knows. However, records show that our Northern Isles hold more robins in the winter than in the summer, so these are presumably migrants.
Though Scandinavian birds look almost exactly the same as ours, their behaviour is quite different. They are shy
