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My Rabbit's New Best Friend is a Robin

Beapig

Mama Doe
My male rabbit, Mr. Ham, has recently made a peculiar friend! A robin living in our garden is frequently sat in his hutch. This morning when I went out to feed him the robin was in there, perched on his hay feeder. When we were eating lunch today we could see him from the window hopping around in the hay :lol:

I know that Robins have a reputation for being tame, but this little guy is the tamest I have ever seen. He's so sweet! I'll try to take some photos tomorrow :D Ham seems indifferent to the robin at the moment, usually when he visits he's too busy stuffing his face with greens haha.
 
In my experience rabbits and small birds have an affinity to each other, My outside rabbits have never been concerned if a bird has entered their enclosure. Also the rabbits have always "understood" alarm calls of birds and taken them seriously.

There's so much we don't understand about the comprehension of animals :love:
 
In my experience rabbits and small birds have an affinity to each other, My outside rabbits have never been concerned if a bird has entered their enclosure. Also the rabbits have always "understood" alarm calls of birds and taken them seriously.

There's so much we don't understand about the comprehension of animals :love:
I think it's probably something to do with birds having very good eyesight and rabbits having excellent hearing. Well, the wild ones anyway ;P Also rabbits like to dig and are big enough to generally disturb insect food so a good idea to hang around them if you're a robin, wren, blackbird... :) The dunnocks are often to be seen pootling about in the run here, but will scarper if a rabbit comes: they're not that brave :lol: But they'll happily coexist on the lawn where there's a safe escape route for the birds (straight up, as there's no roof).
 
In my experience rabbits and small birds have an affinity to each other, My outside rabbits have never been concerned if a bird has entered their enclosure. Also the rabbits have always "understood" alarm calls of birds and taken them seriously.

There's so much we don't understand about the comprehension of animals :love:

That's really interesting and explains my buns' reaction to birds. When I have the windows open in the Summer you can sometimes hear the birds squawking quite loudly near the window. My two would then sit bolt upright and thump a few times. I always thought they were just irritated by the birds but it sounds as though they were reacting to the birds' warning squawks.


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Yes,other animals react to birds,grey squirrels in the garden will climb fences,walls etc on alert if birds give alarm calls,hawks/cats.
 
What I don't understand, having come back to this, is how the robin got in to the hutch: the holes in the wire mesh are so small. Am I being dim here?
 
What I don't understand, having come back to this, is how the robin got in to the hutch: the holes in the wire mesh are so small. Am I being dim here?
If you take a look at bird boxes the holes for the birds to get in and out are often very small. Robins 'fluff up' a fair bit to trap layers of air between their feathers an keep warm making them appear much bigger than they really are.

I do hope you manage to get photos - it sounds so cute :love:
 
What I don't understand, having come back to this, is how the robin got in to the hutch: the holes in the wire mesh are so small. Am I being dim here?

The hutch door was open Babsie, but he likes to fly in voluntarily and explore - he climbed the stairs at one point to get to the second level!

Now that Ham & Bea are bonded and living together, Ham is no longer in the hutch that the robin liked to visit, but today when I was feeding them he decided to fly in to the greenhouse run for the first time and explore :)

2017-11-28_08-47-03 by Rachel Brown, on Flickr
 
How cute :love: Well done for the successful bond btw. They look lovely together and on your other thread I liked the pic of them eating together.

Just a word of caution though, Robins and all wild birds will carry a lot of diseases in their droppings. We have a Robin who, each day would enter the chicken run and eat their food. We discourage this by shutting the door, each time they come out, as we do not want disease transferred to the chickens. The risk is possibly not so great with transfer of diseases to rabbits, but I would be watchful of what the Robin is doing i.e. what is he eating and where is he producing his droppings.

It is a very cute picture though :)
 
The hutch door was open Babsie, but he likes to fly in voluntarily and explore - he climbed the stairs at one point to get to the second level!

Now that Ham & Bea are bonded and living together, Ham is no longer in the hutch that the robin liked to visit, but today when I was feeding them he decided to fly in to the greenhouse run for the first time and explore :)

2017-11-28_08-47-03 by Rachel Brown, on Flickr

Love it! :love:
 
How cute :love: Well done for the successful bond btw. They look lovely together and on your other thread I liked the pic of them eating together.

Just a word of caution though, Robins and all wild birds will carry a lot of diseases in their droppings. We have a Robin who, each day would enter the chicken run and eat their food. We discourage this by shutting the door, each time they come out, as we do not want disease transferred to the chickens. The risk is possibly not so great with transfer of diseases to rabbits, but I would be watchful of what the Robin is doing i.e. what is he eating and where is he producing his droppings.

It is a very cute picture though :)

Thank you Omi, I'm so so happy that they're living together now. When they were living alone they were sleeping a lot of the day and not very active. Now, if I go outside to check them after 10.00pm, they're still running around and playing together. It's so lovely to see! :)

And thank you for the heads up, that's a really good point! For the most part it's hard for him to get in to the buns as the greenhouse is 100% secure now, I took this picture when I was feeding them - he flew in shortly after I opened the door, little guy is bold as brass! I agree that it's probably not a good idea to encourage it but the buns are fully vaccinated now, so hopefully their immune systems are good and strong.
 
The hutch door was open Babsie, but he likes to fly in voluntarily and explore - he climbed the stairs at one point to get to the second level!

Now that Ham & Bea are bonded and living together, Ham is no longer in the hutch that the robin liked to visit, but today when I was feeding them he decided to fly in to the greenhouse run for the first time and explore :)

2017-11-28_08-47-03 by Rachel Brown, on Flickr


What a beautiful picture :love:

And well done you for the bonding!
 
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