Why we don’t know who killed Cock Robin

That fierce neighbouring cat, which has killed or scared off our mice, has not yet destroyed our robin. Cats do not enjoy eating robins. If they do so by mistake, they vomit. But that does not stop them attacking the birds for sport. We think of robins as very tame, and they are — in England. In the past we killed them for various purposes. In the 17th century robins (and sparrows) were eaten to break up kidney stones, for which a surgical operation, in those days, was dangerous if not impossible. If the surgeon was not swift and skilful enough to get the stone out within 20 minutes, the pain was so intense that the patient died on the table. People justified eating robins accordingly. They were also consumed ‘to loosen Children’s Bellies and to carry off acrophilous Humors’. This killing of robins stopped here early in the 19th century, in that same wave of sentiment which led the English to ban the slave trade and enact the first laws against cruelty to animals. But Continentals continued to trap and gorge these harmless birds, especially in those haunts of haute cuisine — Burgundy, Champagne and Lorraine. The great Victorian naturalist Charles Waterton noted with disgust that hundreds of robins were for sale in the Rome markets ‘under the noses of the cardinals who have a similar livery’. When I used to go for long tramps in Normandy and Poitou in the 1950s, I was still offered dishes of small birds, including robins, in local bistros. So it’s not surprising the tameness of robins stops at the Channel. Across it they are still secretive.

But if English robins are tame, they are not exactly friendly and can never be made into pets, like geese or parrots or ravens, or even magpies.