Mike in the Wild

"Stop calling that  bird a robin redbreast, it's a plain, old robin," are words that resonated in my mind when I first started photographing this avian a couple years ago.  The childhood chastisements were from the older neighborhood kids who wanted to show how much they knew.  While bruising my ego a little, they didn't dampen my interest in this very common and easily identifiable bird in my suburban New Jersey neighborhood.   Many years later and many miles away, and much to my surprise, I also see the bird in my Phoenix neighborhood.  I've always associated the robin with green lawns, pulling earth worms from the muddy ground of just watered grasses.  It turns out that the irrigated landscape of the desert southwest is an ideal hunting ground for this insect loving avian.  It also turns out that this "robin redbreast" isn't just a plain old robin, it's an American robin.   A real robin is actually the European robin, not living ...