Robin Redbreast

 Robin Redbreast, by David Lack

I read an old Slightly Foxed issue, which always adds to my TBR list, and this book sounded intriguing and fun.  It's a complete collection of folklore, literary references and poetry, and historical mentions of....robins!  Mostly just in the UK, where robins were popular and beloved -- while over on the continent, they were often hunted and eaten.  Now the European robin and the American robin are two totally different species, so if you're American, you have to think of a different bird.

David Lack wrote an entire book observing the life of the wild robin, and this was by way of being a fun but scholarly collection of literary and cultural robins,   We start off with legends about robins, because there was a belief that robins would come and reverently cover the face of anyone they found dead in the forest -- especially if the person had been murdered.  And then, why are robins always boys, culturally married to wrens?  

Then we have lots of poetry and literary references, an explanation of why robins are all over old Christmas cards (they were the first thing to be put on Christmas cards at all), and a lot of space devoted to robins and children.  The British used robins for children's first lessons in nature and kindness to animals, so there are innumerable poems, songs, stories, and books about robins.

So this was fun!  I didn't read it all at once -- that's a lot of robin lore -- but it was very nice to dip into when I felt like it.  I learned interesting things too.

The European robin!

And here we are at the end of 2025.  I think I'm starting to come out of my two-year reading slump; we'll see how it goes.  I'm not going to get ambitious with numbers or topics, but I am going to try to read more, with more diverse topics than endless fluffy mysteries, and post here more.  I think I might be interested in French history and the Thirty Years' War?