Robins British and American

 

When preparing my Christmas icons series the other week I googled the robin and found that Americans have a different robin bird to us. More recently I was able to check this out when we had some Americans visiting the house. I showed them one of several cards we had up showing a robin redbreast in the snow. Blank faces. Is it some sort of finch? they asked. I explained.

Then more recently still I took in a good slice of the 1964 film Mary Poppins that people were watching. In the spoonful of sugar scene nesting robins are shown, as  above. They are clearly mechanical birds of some sort but I remember thinking down the years what poor examples they were not resembling any bird I'd ever seen. I now see that they are representations of American robins and not bad. Of course, the very idea that such birds would be seen in London is a gaff and duly noted at the appropriate place on IMDb here.