Aberrant Robin song

In early April 2001, PH heard an unfamiliar bird-song emanating from tall shrubs in Penrith Cemetery; the singer was most elusive, and although his best view suggested a bird of about Robin size, the song was very different from that bird‘s typical performance. It reminded PH in its tone of Cirl Bunting song. On 16th April Roy Bottomley, Margaret Roberts and the writers met at the cemetery at about 20:00hr. Even from a distance, the strange song was clearly audible, and clearly different from any familiar song. (To JR it sounded just like the sort of song one might expect to emanate from a dank black spruce forest in a dark and mosquito-ridden Siberian swamp well east of the Urals . . .) Seeing the bird turned out to be a different proposition. The bird sang almost continuously for some time, always from the tops of any of several thick cypresses, often flitting across from one tree to the next without being observed, and even when it moved out into the crowns of more open pines and deciduous trees it remained well-concealed.  Eventually, and almost at the point of giving up, we did manage to see the bird well, and confirm our suspicions that the bird was indeed a Robin. Given this somewhat deflating conclusion, we did think that the bird was behaving rather differently from typical Robin behaviour. Furthermore, other Robins holding territory in the area did not appear to respond to its song. The song was very shrill, and each phrase consisted of two to four high, rising, slurred whistles. Some phrases ended with a short thin warble of a few notes, more Robin-like, but still distinctively thin, high and slurred. JR recorded some periods of song onto a voice recorder, which - although of poor quality - enabled timings to be estimated. Song phrases occupied 1-2½ seconds, with intervals between typically of 4 to 10 seconds. The nature of the performance was not that of a sub-song, which typically consists of even longer and more melodic phrases. BWP (volume V page 609) states the normal song is 'highly variable within and between individuals; overall c. 1300 motifs are known to be used - 275 motifs by one bird‘. However, there is very little space given to aberrant songs. The song of the central Canaries race is said to consist of 'short phrases of 1-2 seconds lacking changes in pitch and tempo‘; a bird from a similarly isolated population at Kirkenes in northeast Norway has short phrases of 1-1½ seconds, repeated 15-20 per minute. Whether this bird was a migrant from elsewhere - perhaps northern Europe - or simply a local bird cannot of course be established, but it will be interesting to see if the bird remains in the area. Peter Hague & Jeremy Roberts