Robin

All our American homies are going:

"Wat?"

Erithacus rubecula is the European robin, and doesn't look much like our ubiquitous American robin and in fact isn't even in the same family, although they are both passerines. The only other things they have in common are reddish bellies and the fact that early European colonists (and the British in particular) were devastatingly uncreative and habitually went around naming apparently every single thing in the new world after things they already had back in the old world.

In other news, the American robin's scientific name is Turdus migratorius. "Turdus" being Latin for "thrush" and having absolutely nothing to do with their propensity to crap on your car. Honest.

This episode of Bird Facts brought to you for no reason in particular.

Really nice photo, what were you taking it with, and what sort of distance?

My Robin story I love to trot out is as follows.

Once upon a time in England there were Redbreasts and Wrens.

This wasn't good enough for poets, so we had Robin Redbreasts and Jenny Wrens (amongst other birds and animals Reynard the Fox, for instance).

But time went by, and people sometimes started just calling them Robins and Jenny's. The former caught on, so the common use name became Robin, while Wren stuck better. However, you will still hear the two part names from time to time.

Beautiful shot!