REDBREAST or ROBIN, a favourite among English birds because of its pleasing colour, its sagacity and fearlessness of man, and its song. In July and August the hedgerows of the southern counties of England are beset with redbreasts, each bird keeping its own distance from the next, on their way to cross the Eng lish Channel. A number of these redbreasts, as well as native birds, remain throughout the winter. On the Continent the migra tion is still more marked, and the redbreast is then caught in numbers for the table. The first sharp frost makes them change their habitation, and a heavy fall of snow drives them towards the homesteads for food. The nest is usually built of moss and dead leaves, with a lining of hair. In this are laid from five to seven white eggs, sprinkled or blotched with light red. Two or three broods are raised. On the Continent, the redbreast is, on the whole, a forest bird, not frequenting houses like the British form.
Although the female has a breast only a little duller than the male, the latter alone displays the red in courtship. After the young are reared fights take place between them and the adults for the possession of the territory for the winter. The robin, like most insectivorous birds, throws up the indigestible parts of its food in the form of pellets.
Besides the British islands, the redbreast (Erithacus rubecula) is generally dispersed over Europe, and is in winter found in the oases of the Sahara. In northern Persia it is replaced by a nearly allied form, E. hyrcanus, distinguishable by its more ruddy hues, while in northern China and Japan another species, E. akahige, is found, of which the sexes differ in plumage—the cock having a blackish band below his red breast and greyish-black flanks, while the hen resembles the British species—but both sexes have the tail chestnut red. The genus Erithacus belongs to the family Turdidae or thrushes (q.v.).
English colonists in distant lands have applied the common nickname of the redbreast to other birds. The ordinary "robin" of North America is a thrush (see RoBIN), and one of the blue-birds (q.v.) of the same continent, is in ordinary speech the blue "robin"; the Australian and Pacific "robins" have not all even the red breast ; the Cape "robin" is Cossophya caffra, the Indian "robin" Thamnobia and the New Zealand "robin" Miro. see JUDAS-TREE.