The Red, Red Robin

In anticipation for the Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend -- we have a childhood favorite! The story behind this song: When Mama Voyager was a young girl, her daddy used to wake her and her brother up by singing this song. He didn't sound anything like Doris Day, but her version is quite energetic and happy, so I chose it for this video!

Feel Free to Sing-A-Long!

Learn More About the Robin!

Wild Bird Watching is a great website for learning about birds. The American Robin page has simple to read information and videos! Watch the mama feed her babies! 

The kidzone also has a good page about the American Robin - with printable worksheets and coloring pages.

To listen to the calls and songs of the American Robin - the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has recordings  from various states. This is a must bookmark website if you are interested in birds!

This ROBIN coloring page is from a 1930 newspaper. The article below was printed with it, and ran is several paper around the country:

Robins Stay In California All Winter
 

ROBIN RED BREAST, Oh yes, we know Robin. Every girl and boy knows robin. No one needs to tell us that it has a red breast, and that its back is dull black. Mother robin wears a duller coat and baby robin sports a speckled breast. We all know that.

Even though the robin is well known, it is interesting. We like to watch it getting its dinner. Its meals are eaten on the ground, but like all of us it likes dessert with its meals and that is usually gotten from trees and bushes. 

Insert - California paper only

If you want to know more about that you must watch it yourself for that is the one thing that people complain about when they speak of the robin.
 
They forget all about the good it does when it hops over the lawn, cocks its head to one side, listens, digs quickly with its sharp bill, and pulls out a grub or a worm. Or when it scratches the leaves, throwing them about, and gobbles up the bugs and beetles, and other insects that will come out from their hiding places at night when we are asleep, and do harm to the trees and other plants.
 
The robin is with us almost all the year Frequently we hear of one staying with us all winter. If we go hiking during the Christmas Holidays [winter] and make a list of the birds we see, we are very likely to have our robin on the list.
 
As many as fifty and more have been seen in a flock in this section during Christmas Holidays. But we have to go to some sheltered ravine in the woods to see them.
 
We say the robin goes south but it has been seen time and again, every month in the year, right around here.
 
You know the robin. Do you know its nest? It differs from other birds' nests in that it is plastered with mud.
 
You can see the robin in spring picking up wet leaves and mud, and often shaping the nest in a nice round bowl, after lining it with soft grass to make a nice place for the four or five pretty blue eggs.
 
Mother robin will sit on the eggs and spread her wings to shelter the eggs of the little ones from rain and storm.

Then comes the busy time when these little ones must be fed. There is not much time then for singing. In early spring Robin would perch on a topmost branch and call "Cheer up! Cheer up!" but now he may have these words in his little heart, while his mouth must be used for carrying food and putting it in the babies' mouths. 

End of California Insert

The robin has a song and a number of other calls that are all cheerful unless he is frightened because he or his little ones are in danger. It is worth getting up before sunrise to hear him begin the morning bird concert.

Robins like to take a bath and make use of a pan of water both for drinking and bathing, if a kind-hearted girl or boy will put one up where they can get to it. 

Robins also like to have a table set for them on a shelf or window sill where they can come for crumbs. They like soft food. 

(Copyright, 1930, for The TRIBUNE.) -- Oakland Tribune - Nov. 2, 1930

 Carrie Jacobs Bond, the author of the Robin newspaper article, was an amazing woman, who faced many challenges in a male-dominated world. After a divorce from her first husband, she married a doctor, who was hit by a snowball thrown by a child. He fell and died from his injuries. She had a son from her first marriage, and wrote music and poetry to eke out a living. Originally from Wisconsin, she later lived in California, and even had a home in La Mesa, not far from where we live! 

You can read a biography on History's Women - quite fascinating, really.

Snowball account from her Wikipedia biography.

*   *   *   *   *

I have more bird articles by Carrie Jacobs Bond, which I will post at a later date. The series was from a Children's Coloring Contest that ran in many newspapers, from about 1927-1930.