© 2004 Ellen Welch Granter ...Science Art-Birds
Title: Robin
Species: American Robin (Turdus migratorius)
Artist:
Ellen Welch Granter
Image size: 8" x 8"
Media: oil on panel
Date: 2005
Collection of the artist
The artist made this quick oil sketch
of the American Robin at Mount
Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA, a 175-acre birding hotspot,
that has been known to host 28 kinds of warblers in a single
tree. Concentrating her attention on the easy-to-see robin
Granter notes, "I tried to capture in a quick gesture
the Robin's wonderful alertness as he was making a ton of
noise in the leaves."
Most people in North America can
recognize a robin, and many consider it their favorite songbird.
Until the mid-1800s, many also found it a delicacy as it
was commonly shot for sport and trapped for market. A century
later, in the mid-1950s, it became the poster bird for recognizing
the long-term effects of DDT in the environment when Rachael
Carson described robin deaths in Silent Spring. The
deaths had occurred after the pesticide was used to control
Dutch elm disease on the Michigan State University campus.
Researchers found that the robins
had been poisoned by earthworms, which accumulate residues
in concentrations five times higher than the surrounding
soil. They also found that since DDT persists in soil for
a long time, robins could continue to accumuate DDT from
earthwoms for decades after a single application.
Robins, it turns out, are both easy-to-see and easy-to-study.
They are not particularly sensitive to monitoring, and will
tolerate radio transmitters. They are currently playing
a part in studies of West Nile virus. One report links
the annual departure of robins to the increase in West Nile
infections in local people. It turns out that
when the robins depart, the Culex pipiens mosquito,
a major carrier of the virus, switches to humans as a food
source. Resarchers determined this shift
by trapping mosquitos and sequencing the DNA from their
last blood meal.
