strange robin behaviour

[Becca]

Hello all :O)

I saw some rather odd behaviour amoungst the 3 resident robins on my plot the other day.. they were all perched in a triangle in the nettle stems on the adjacent plot and one of them was doing what I can best describe as the 'stevie wonder head shake' whilst the other 2 watched.. then the all flew off happily to their respective favourite perchs.. I was wondering if anyone had seen this before and whether it was a 'oi, you wanna start something!' aggressive gesture or more a 'hey baby, look at me.. ;O) ' bit of showing off? Hoping for the latter as I'd love some little robin babies..

Cheers,

Becca

[lainey lou]

Maybe a courting ritual?

[Becca]

that's what I was hoping.. almost looked like a little robin dance move..

[lainey lou]

Smooth!!

[Becca]

yep, maybe my robin is a bit of a player... trying to chat up two birds at once..

[Flummery]

Two male robins will fight to the death. If they didn't fight there must have been some courtship going on!
Strange that the 'birdsong' people love to hear in spring often translates as 'Come over here if you think you're hard enough and I'll rip off your head and hit you with the soggy end' sort of thing.
Some birds will parade up and down along the boundary of their territories and sort of stake their claim, doing strange actions or even holding leaves in their beaks. I assume this mean, 'this is my nest-material collecting territory'.

[SueA]

Not robins but wrens I saw fighting the other week at Ness Botanic Gardens. They were really going at it throwing each other on their backs with fett flying. It was all over in a few seconds, that's why the pic.'s a bit blurred, I had to zoom in & click fast.

[terrier]

As Flum says, Robins are not party animals, if you saw three in close proximity, the it's more than likely they were two females and one male.

[Becca]

I've seen 2 having a fight in the exact same spot so there must be 2 males in the vicinity, but took me a while to spot I had 3 different ones so it's not impossible I actually have 4!
Can't remember where I saw it (gardeners world maybe?) but apparently, due to the abundance of food and lack of predators in the Eden Project the robins that have got in their have abandoned their territorial habits and rub along quite happily!

[Becca]

Robin update.. think it was courtship behaviours and seems to have won him the heart of the fair lady as 2 robins were bobbling around the plot together (well within a foot or 3 of each other) at the weekend and not attempting to kill each other which in robin behavior probably means it's love they seem to be very camera shy tho so no pics of the happy couple as yet, going to see about putting them up a starter home this weekend

[Shortie]

Are you going to make them pay rent Becca? lol

Something like, you eat my slugs and snails, and only minimal fruit and veg crops?

[Birdie Wife]

Aww that's sweet... hope they stick around and you get robin fledglings to watch later in the year