I’m not unfamiliar with the effects of sexual attraction on evolution. I was responding to your speculation about robins living where there was a a good source of carotenoids, in the way that pink flamingoes do. I was pointing out that as both species are very widespread, over many types of habitat, I don’t think one can draw any conclusions about food sources influencing their plumage.
To clarify, it’s the European Blackbird Turdus merula that’s a thrush. American Blackbirds belong to an entirely different family, the Icteridae, which also includes meadowlarks and New World Orioles (which are not related to the Old World Orioles.)
Carotenoids are not particularly hard to come by. Birds can pick them up from foods found in most environments.
Sorry, I should have been clearer when I mentioned blackbirds. I meant that American robins are quite similar to European blackbirds. I could be wrong but the impression I had was that they are more closely related than they are to other thrushes.
They are quite closely related, being members of the same genus; the American Robin is Turdus migratorius.
There’s an interesting robin-related error in the film Mary Poppins (since we brought up both American and European robins). During the song “A Spoonful of Sugar”, when the lyrics mention “a robin feathering his nest”, an animatronic AMERICAN robin perches on Julie Andrews’ finger and sings. The movie is set in London, so the bird should be a European robin.
I knew that, Colibri; but is a European blackbird is more closely related to an American robin than it is to a European song thrush (Turdus philomelos) or a European mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus)? To me it certainly looks like it is, but I know that doesn’t mean anything.
You expect ornithological exactitude from a movie with dancing, singing penguins? http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/5736.jpg
And BTW, I think it’s just rude to have given robins the genus name “turdus.”
I bet they’re not even that thrilled with being associated with fungal infections.
You wouldn’t say that if you parked your car around them.
I have quite a few of these in my yard lately, and the males are decidedly brighter in color. (American)
This paper provides a recent study of thrush genetics. However, the did not sample enough members of the genus Turdus to come to any definite conclusions about relationships between its members. I would expect that the Blackbird is more closely related to other European thrushes than it is to the American Robin, and the latter related to other American thrushes. Something like the Rufous-collared Thrush of Central America is probably one of the closer relatives.
Maybe, but that Rufous-collared thrush looks much more like a European blackbird than does any other European thrush, in shape as well as colour of feathers and beak.
Well what kind of blackbird is all over Chicago? I see the red wing black birds by the river, but we have other blackbirds that are all over Chicago and they look like black robins?
BTW Chicago has black squirrels, there’s a whole bunch around Western and Fullerton.
Back to the topic…
One thing that molecular genetics of birds has taught us is that appearances are often not an accurate guide to relationships.
If you are talking about actual blackbirds, the most likely one is Brewer’s Blackbirds. There are several other birds that are black it could be.
Well they look just like red wing black birds except they are all grayish black. That pic of a brewer blackbird looks like them but it looks pretty. The ones in Chicago are dull black with very dark gray
I know, I’d already acknowledged that.
sqweels said:
Very good question. Apparently it is a historic tradition. The European robin’s original name was “redbreast”, so called because of the striking color of the bird. It was a linguistic gimmick that morphed the name to robin (15th century, so “redbreast” is very old).
Why did they call it “red” instead of orange? Wiki says that the word “orange” didn’t get into the English language until the 14th Century. Before that, the color was called geoluhread in Old English, which translates to “yellow-red” in Modern English.
So it seems to me that there was a lack of a good word for the color, and people defaulted to the most striking similar color, i.e. red. This would also explain the use of “redhead” for people with orangish hair. Of course, there are also people with really red hair.
**G. Odoreida ** said:
Just did a google image search on “british robin” and they look pretty orange to me.
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&sa=1&q=british+robin&aq=f&oq=
Those are females and immatures (scroll down).
So what was the point of your post #33? You seemed to be implying that you were basing the possible relationships of the European Blackbird on the basis of which species it visually resembled.