Why the robin needs to be pushed off its snowy Christmas card perch | Richard Smyth

Its red breast may look pretty and festive, but there are many less vicious, needy birds with better credentials for cute Crimbo poses. Here are some suggestionsWe all know by now that robins are outright beasts. Philip Hoare called our red-breasted national bird - re-elected to the post in 2015 - a "vicious, murdering bully", and he wasn't wrong: robins are belligerent, petty and brutally confrontational birds (Hoare noted that 10% of all adult robin deaths are "robin-on-robin incidents", and they will go after other species too). Of course, this kind of behaviour is just a function of the robin's evolved nature; it doesn't mean to be a blood-soaked thug, and we can't blame it for being one. All I'll say is, I don't think territorial murder is very Christmassy.It's too late, alas, to unseat the robin as the UK's flagship bird, but I do think it's high time we had a talk about putting it on our Christmas cards. Continue reading...