I'll Have Some Breast of Robin

Knowing I'm an inveterate birder (please... not birdwatcher), my officemate sent me this story from today's BBC website.

Seems a hapless American robin from the "southern" US found its way all the way across the Atlantic Ocean landing in Great Britain, in Grimsby in point of fact, on the eastern North Sea coast. The very sight of a robin-redbreast got the "twitchers" in England in such a lather that they forthwith repaired themselves to this dreary corner of Central England to see this prize bird. ("Twitcher" is a somewhat pejorative term for a birder who travels about looking for rarities simply for the satisfaction of adding the bird to his or her life list.)

Evidently, as they stood awestruck at the sight of a bird we take for granted, a sparrowhawk (must be a British bird, we don't have a bird so named in North America) swooped down in front of them all and devoured the errant creature.

"It was a terrible moment," said one birder from the British Trust for Ornithology. Not for the sparrowhawk I should think.

Yum... American cuisine.
K-