Robin redbreast, originally uploaded by GlennFleishman.

With the warm weather this summer, many gardeners’ berry plants around the Hill are highly productive. This means more fruit — but the birds often get it before we do. One notorious fruit thief on the Hill is the American robin.

American robins are gray-brown birds with reddish or orange breasts. The males’ breasts are darker red, the females’ lighter orange. If you look closely, you’ll see that robins have white spectacle-like rings around each eye.

A large proportion of the robins’ diet is not actually fruit, but insects. Robins tend to spend the morning hours hopping around on lawns, looking for small invertebrates to eat. By afternoon, they’re more likely to be in trees, gleaning insects from the branches or eating any fruits they can forage.

Robins eat slugs, snails, and many other invertebrates that attack gardens. There is some evidence that they also selectively eat wormy fruit, probably because of its higher protein content. Even so, a robin or two can make a pretty big dent in your blueberry harvest. If this is happening to you, your best bet is probably to cover your berries with a mesh cloth to keep the birds out.

Robins are a typical member of any backyard bird population. If you don’t have a yard, you can find them fairly easily by following their musical song. Lawns and trees around any local park are good places to look.

Learn more

• Check out the robin’s page at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
• Before you go out looking for robins, take a moment to familiarize yourself with its song and call.
• If robins are eating your garden crops, this page has some helpful tips.

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