Wildlife On Rising Time: Robins & Insects
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Why do robins seem absent during the summer months in Ireland?
This is Mooney Goes Wild on RTE Radio One.
So a busy hour of nature ahead of us here on RT Radio One in the company of the Mooney Goes Wild team in studio with me, Niall Hatch. If you are up early yesterday morning and the previous Sunday, you would have heard myself and Niall discussing nature on rising time. It was great, Nile. Thank you for your company for the last two weeks.
And thanks for inviting me in. It was a lot of fun and actually very exciting to see all of the queries actually coming in live right there on the machine. And some hanging over, I believe. Yes, we do. We have a few that there were so many, far more than we could address during the program, in between all the mix of music and everything.
How can you locate summer robins by recognizing their song?
Uh one of the queries that I found very interesting, someone asked uh why they don't see any robins during the summer months. Don't they? Well, obviously if they they they're not seeing them, they're they're not seeing them. I certainly do see them, but I know what they sound like so when you know what their what the song is you can track them down quite easily. They are around us all the time. Robins stay in Ireland all year round. Pretty easier to see in the winter for a couple of reasons. First of all there are fewer leaves and on the trees and the bushes so there's no fewer places for them to hide. And also they're more likely to come out to bird tables and to patios and so on looking for food.
What reasons make robins easier to spot in winter than in summer?
But they're in our gardens just when they're nesting they keep a lower profile. They want uh to to avoid drawing attention to their nests and their Chicks and their eggs. And then after the nesting season for a few weeks, they're molting their feathers, so they feel very vulnerable. So from let's say May through to August, I would say they tend to keep a lower profile, but they are around and the males are singing their hearts out as part of the Dawn Chorus. You'll remember, Derek, you know, from our Dawn Chorus programme every year down in Cuscane Marsh Nature Reserve, you hear the the robins as one of the main birds down there, and that's the case all throughout the summer. Robins are one of only birds we have that sing in all twelve months of the year.
So when you know the song of the robin it's quite easy to track them down and you realise they are pretty common.
What about
the flies
bumping off the window, but still managing to get away with it?
Why do flies, bees and wasps survive crashing into windows?
Yes, uh yeah, we had a query in about why flying into like flies, bees and wasps, they'll go full throttle, bounce off the kitchen window, and then just fly away seemingly unharmed. So the question was, are they injuring themselves? Uh sometimes they injure themselves, especially um if they hit it very hard or at a strange angle, uh but mostly they're fine, and the reason for that is that they have very little mass. Uh so it's for sort of the same reason that um an animal like a like a spider could fall from a great height and land on the ground. ground, it would be equivalent of us, you know, falling off a cliff or something, but they're not injured. It's because they weigh so little, there's very little mass, so the impact has very little uh little causes very little damage.
Also, when these flies and wasps hit the windows, they're hitting them head first. Now for us or for birds or for other mammals and so on, that'd be really bad because that's where our brain is and it causes all sorts of problems. Uh for flies uh it's not like that at all. They're not controlled by brain in their head the same way that we are.
What are the main take‑aways about robin behavior and insect collisions?
They have sort of clusters of nerve endings in their backs and so actually d damage to their head isn't as catastrophic as you would think. Uh the biggest risk I suppose would be injury to their eyes. They have very complex uh eye arrangement, these sort of compound eyes. Uh and I suppose they could be damaged, but generally because they weigh so little they get away with this. A larger creature like a bird, if they hit the window head first, it's often far more catastrophic.
Well, if you didn't hear myself and nine from seven to eight I was presenting Rising Time sitting in for Lillian, but from seven to eight we did nature.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why do robins seem absent during the summer months in Ireland?
0:00–0:48
2
How can you locate summer robins by recognizing their song?
0:48–1:17
3
What reasons make robins easier to spot in winter than in summer?
1:17–1:58
4
Why do flies, bees and wasps survive crashing into windows?
1:58–2:48
5
What are the main take‑aways about robin behavior and insect collisions?
2:48–3:20