There was one of those Christmas quiz shows on television. The quizmaster was Richard Osman, the man who used to be on Pointless but who then became a bestselling crime writer (a case of verification of the Biblical maxim, to he who has shall be given, like Cillian Murphy having a music programme on BBC Radio 6).
The contestants were being asked for numbers to answer arbitrary questions. One question was on how many beefeaters there had been in the Tower of London. Given that the tradition has existed for five and half centuries any number given might have been credible.
There was one answer that seemed unlikely, the question was how many breeding pairs of robins are there in Britain. The answers were given in tens and hundreds of thousands. The actual answer was 7,350,000. It seemed a very unlikely figure. ‘Second only to the wren’, said Mr Osman. That seemed even more unlikely.
The numbers seemed so large that Google was called upon for verification. Sure enough, the number of breeding pairs of robins was cited as 7.4 millions. That gives a total population of 14.8 millions. The figure for the pairs of wrens was a million more, which means there are nearly 17 million wrens in Britain.
Where are they?
Robins still seem such notable visitors that some people suggest they are the soul of a departed loved one (a tradition that I only discovered in conversation with First Year students during the past year.
Fourteen million seems such a large number that it seems almost odd that robins still occasion comment.
And the wrens?
Like the robins, the appearance of a ‘jenny wren’ was something to prompt comment.
Perhaps it is just in our corner of England that the largest bird populations are not as obvious as their figures would suggest. Even so, the combined total is more than thirty millions and I do not believe either species has been visible in the garden during the past week.
It was a surprise that the robins and the wrens outnumbered the sparrows, which seemed ever present in our garden.
Perhaps the notion that sparrows were a plurality arose from the Gospel teaching of Jesus on God’s concern for the small and insignificant, ‘not a sparrow shall fall.’ Maybe in First Century Palestine, the plurality lay with the sparrows.
‘Not a robin shall fall,’ would seem a much more graphic image, but would have lacked a feeling of the commonplace. As numerous as they may be, the robins retain a special place.
Perhaps it confirms something that we casually ignore… the world is a very big place and even in a crowded Britain mostly empty. And approximately 70% is covered by water.
In my youth there were regular news items about people dying of exposure on a short walk in the countryside.
It’s a wonder that breeding pairs find each other.
The winter mortality rate of birds always intrigued me when I was young. I couldn’t understand why, if so many died, it was rare to see any lying dead.