The European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) is one of Sweden's most recognisable and best-loved songbirds, with an intensely orange breast and face, a round, plump body and a cascading song heard from early spring into late autumn. It measures 12.5-14 cm in length, has a wingspan of 20-22 cm and weighs 16-22 grams, with an olive-brown back, wings and tail, a white belly and undertail, and a dark, thin bill and legs. Unusually among Swedish songbirds, the sexes look identical, both carrying the same bright orange face and breast bordered by a grey-blue edge toward the neck; juveniles lack the orange entirely, appearing mottled brown until their first autumn moult.
The song is a pearling, melodic, cascading run of varied phrases, with a softer, more melancholic autumn version heard September to November, one of the very few Swedish birds that sings actively through the colder months, as males resume song in autumn to establish and defend an individual winter territory, and females likewise hold and defend their own winter territories with song. The contact call is a sharp "tick" or "tic-tic-tic". Breeding throughout Sweden up to the birch line in the mountains, the population is estimated at one to three million pairs; the species is a partial migrant, with some birds wintering in southern Sweden while most leave in September-October for southern Europe and North Africa, returning in March-April. Breeding runs April to July with usually two broods, the female building a low nest close to the ground in a root plate, wall crevice or dense garden shrub, laying 5-7 white to pale pink eggs with red spots. Its diet of insects, spiders and earthworms in summer shifts to berries and seeds in autumn and winter, and its tameness around people is thought to stem from an instinct to follow ground-disturbing animals such as badgers and catch the insects they expose.
Read about this species in Swedish →