Dining with Robins

Robins were a popular American dish for hundreds of years. What did it take to get them off the menu?

If anyone has the claim to being America’s best-loved bird, it’s the robin. These cheerful and universally recognized creatures love hanging out in the front lawn, pulling up earthworms and gorging themselves on berries. They’re joyfully welcomed as the first sign of spring, and their cheerful chirps brighten moods wherever they’re found, although they often start singing earlier than some of us might prefer.

And people have always loved them. But while today we love them in our yards and parks, people used to love them best in pies and on toast. From poor frontier families to wealthy urban diners, robin was a dish enjoyed by all. That is, until we decided that we liked the birds better alive than dead.

No other bird has followed such a dramatic food to friend trajectory. But their disappearance from the dinner table was not a simple, natural, or painless transition, nor was it just a question of changing tastes. While the crusade to transform the status of robins led to stronger protections for wildlife, it also mobilized some of the most ugly and enduring conflicts in American society, pitting north against south, rich against poor, and white against Black.

America’s earliest European colonizers saw robins as just one among many sources of food winging its way through the new continent. Writing in 1671, the English traveler John Josselyn described the robin as “Thrushes with red breasts, which will be very fat and are good meat.” A hundred and forty years later, this sentiment hadn’t much changed, as the ornithologist Alexander Wilson agreed: “When fat, [robins] are in considerable esteem for the table.”¹

In their summer home in the northern states, robins were always abundant. But they rarely gathered in the same numbers as they did when they wintered in the south. There they would roost by the tens of thousands, gathering in flocks large enough to make hunting brutally efficient.

In the 1830s, the painter-ornithologist John James Audubon witnessed “a sort of jubilee among the gunners” in southern states when robins returned for the winter. There, “the havoc made among them with bows and arrows, blowpipes, guns, and traps of different sorts” meant that hunters could “stand round the foot of a tree loaded with berries, and shoot the greater part of the day, so fast do the flocks of Robins succeed each other.” With so many “fat and juicy” birds being killed throughout the season, robins could be found abundantly in Southern markets and sell for as little as two for a penny.² Virtually every town had an open-air market where shoppers were sure to find robins piled in barrels or tied up in strings next to ducks, geese, quail, and woodcocks.

A game stand in New York City's Fulton Market, from Harper's Weekly on January 5, 1878.

Even in the north, robins were such a common food that their flavor was a benchmark for comparison with other birds. Blue jays were “not so well flavored as the robin,” northern flickers were “not so tender as the robin,” and pine grosbeaks were “very sweet, much like that of the robin.”³

Wholesalers in Manhattan’s Washington Market stocked “bushels and bushels of robins” which they sold for a dollar a dozen, while “every game seller and provision dealer displays strings and bunches of robins hanging outside his stalls.” Robins were a fixture at restaurants too, and one British traveler noted that “every eating-house advertises ‘Robins on Toast,’ one of the most favorite dishes of the masses when they are sufficiently in funds to justify the expenditure.”⁴

An example of a fancy recipe for robin, from The Epicurean, a 1912 collection of recipes from the prestigious Delmonico’s restaurant in New York City.

Much more frequently, though, robins were eaten baked in a pie. The birds were considered a more proletarian fare than the bobwhite, grouse, and canvasback ducks pursued by wealthy sportsmen and well-heeled gourmands. As one writer put it in 1902, “when properly prepared this bird is palatable and is eagerly sought by housekeepers,” who might also serve them stewed with sweet potatoes or fried in lard.⁵

A recipe for Robin Pie, from Wehman's Cook Book: A Complete Collection of Valuable Recipes Suited to Every Household and All Tastes, published in 1890.

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In 1848, the prominent outdoorsman Frank Forester published a canonical work on hunting in the United States, where he tried to define which animals were proper to hunt. “Game is not every thing which exists in the shape of birds or beasts in a state of nature,” he wrote. But all the same, “game is an arbitrary term.” He classified game birds as ducks, geese, swans, turkey, grouse, rail, plover, and woodcocks, and more broadly animals “which are the natural pursuit of certain high breeds of dogs.”⁶

Robins, you’ll notice, are not on this list. There have always been shifts in which animals are okay to eat, and which ones are considered outside the realm of food, based on changes in cultural, sanitary, and ethical norms. And part way through the 19th century, some people started to think that robins should no longer be considered food.

Starting around the 1830s, affluent white hunters began developing a new and distinctive ethic around killing wild animals, something that they termed sportsmanship. In their eyes, hunting was meant to be a trial of skill, composure, perseverance, and knowledge, rather than merely a way of putting food on the table. As one writer defined it, “the sportsman must be a gentleman, shooting only game proper, and that is never out of season, taking an animal on the run, and the bird on the wing in order to give each a chance for its life.”⁷

Sportsmen set different targets and methods of shooting along a moral hierarchy. They stopped shooting at proverbial and literal sitting ducks and criticized hunters that made easy kills. Some birds, long hunted for the market or to feed a family, earned a reprieve from upstanding sportsmen. Birds that were considered harmless, that did not give good sport, that were too beautiful or too small were no longer, quite literally, fair game. And they expected everyone else to abide by these principles too. Well-connected sportsmen successfully lobbied state legislatures to ban tactics they saw as unsportsmanlike, such as trapping and night hunting.

More than anything, though, this code was meant to separate sportsmen from those who killed animals for profit or sustenance – in other words, people who hunted out of necessity. As the historian Nicolas Proctor argued in his book Bathed in Blood: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South, sportsmanship was used more as an instrument of exclusion than a deeply ingrained code of behavior. And robins became a litmus test for morality, as defined by these aristocratic whites. Anyone who still hunted robins – most often southern Blacks, poor whites, and Italian immigrants – was considered unethical, cruel, barbaric, uncultured, and uncaring. Drawing these lines along race and class lines was probably the entire point.

As is often the case, elite tastes proved contagious, and northern writers soon became more vocal in their criticism of robin-hunters. In his comprehensive 1867 review of foods found in the markets of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, Thomas De Voe left the following summary:

Christian magazines also began chastising hunters and “vagabond boys”⁸ for shooting robins, which were characterised as innocent and helpful birds. Robins’ behavior typified the ideal home life, with devoted and monogamous parents dutifully caring for their young chicks. Boys who killed these virtuous birds, so the thinking went, would grow up to be cruel and lawless men.

Some moral instruction set to verse, from The Christian Union, vol. 18 no. 8, 1878.

Not everyone thought robins were as blameless as commonly believed. Many farmers accused robins of raiding their cherry trees and complained about the “sickly sentimentality of robin-redbreasts.” One Connecticut farmer argued that “the robin is eminently a game bird, and makes the most delicate and delicious eating known. If, therefore, you beg the question, kill a mess for a savory pot-pie at such time as when they are in the height of their plunder … you have not violated any law for the good of the community.”⁹

But for the most part, lawmakers sided with the wealthy sportsmen and the educated urban representatives of the new conservation movement. Soon, state after state passed laws protecting robins and other songbirds from being hunted and sold. The laws were ultimately quite successful in ending the market for robins. In Washington, DC, for example, you used to be able to find as many as 2,600 robins displayed for sale in city markets at one time. But after congress banned the sale of songbirds in the district in 1899, “through strict enforcement of the law this trade has now practically ceased.”¹⁰

The seasonal availability of different game animals, according to a 1912 cookbook for Delmonico’s. For robins it simply states “Law against selling.”

Hunters who had until recently enjoyed a perfectly legal robin pie now found themselves guilty of poaching. Those that still tried to skirt the law faced steep fines and jail sentences if they were caught. In one widely-reported case, two Italian immigrants were tried in New York for killing wild robins. When brought to court, they confessed that they had “boiled alive and then eaten young robins and flickers which they had taken from their nests.” Because they couldn’t pay the hefty fine associated with the offense, they were each jailed for nearly two months.¹¹

By the end of the century, every northern and western state had passed laws protecting robins from being hunted or sold. Eight southern states, however, still defined them as legal game. This created a situation in which robins were protected as they traveled north for spring and summer, but were hunted in large numbers as soon as they returned south. As one writer in Field and Stream put it in 1910, “every State that permits the shooting of robins harms all the other States through which the robin migrates,”¹² since robins were credited with controlling agricultural pests that would otherwise destroy crops worth millions of dollars.

The open seasons for robins in a few southern states. From Farmers’ Bulletin no. 470: Game Laws for 1911.

Northern commentators eagerly seized on this regional conflict, which only confirmed their beliefs about the South’s violence and cultural inferiority. And they were not shy about laying the blame along racial and class lines. “No Northern man thinks of shooting a robin at any time,” wrote the President of the League of American Sportsmen. “Yet in the South, white man and negro alike slaughter these innocent and beautiful birds at every opportunity … Let us do everything possible to convince these Southern people that the robin and the dove are not game birds and should not be killed at any time.”¹³

From William Temple Hornaday’s 1913 book Our Vanishing Wild Life.

The conservationist and eugenicist William Temple Hornaday wrote in gleefully grotesque detail how the “poor white trash of Tennessee” would enter cedar forests to hunt robins at night. A hunter would blind birds with a torch, grab one robin after another from its roost, then “quickly pull off its head, and drop it into a sack.” One small town alone, he estimated, would send 120,000 robins to market each year. This sort of barbaric behavior, he concluded, was beyond the pale of civilized society. “No white man calling himself a sportsman ever indulges in such low pastimes as the killing of such birds for food,” wrote Hornaday. “That burden of disgrace rests upon the negroes and poor whites of the South.”¹⁴

There were plenty of people in the south who wanted to see robin-hunting end. “It fairly makes my blood boil,” fumed one Tennessee woman, “to walk along the streets and see such signs as ‘Robins on Toast, 20c’; ‘Robin Pie, 20c.,’ and to see rows upon rows of robins in front of restaurants.” But an Audubon Society co-founder, T. Gilbert Pearson, was sympathetic, or at least strategic, about the political realities. He saw robins as a sacrificial lamb to get other conservation laws through state legislatures. Since robins had been hunted in the south for generations, he reasoned, if they tried to ban them from the market “there would not be the slightest chance of passing the bill for the protection of other birds.”¹⁵

Anthropomorphizing robins to deliver moral instruction is one thing, but having a bird name-drop a piece of conservation legislation pushes the limits of credibility. From a story appearing in John Martin’s Book: The Child’s Magazine, 1924.

The recognition that a patchwork of state game laws provided birds with a very uneven system of protection helped motivate Congress to pass the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1918. With that legislation, songbirds like the robin became wards of the federal government, and it became illegal to hunt and sell the birds throughout the entire country. “If you’ve never eaten robin pie don’t begin now,” warned the Bureau of Biological Survey, which quickly began prosecuting violations of the new law.¹⁶

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For more than a century now, robin pie has been an illegal dish. But if you’re okay with eating domesticated chicken or wild geese (which I am, on occasion), it’s worth interrogating why some animals are broadly considered fine to kill and turn into food, while others enjoy a near-sacred designation as wildlife. Next time you see a robin, I’d invite you to imagine having one for lunch. And then feel grateful that you don’t have to.

1. Josselyn, New-England’s Rarities Discovered in Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, and Plants of That Country. By John Josselyn, Gent. With an Introduction and Notes, by Edward Tuckerman, M.A.; Wilson, Alexander., Brewer, Thomas Mayo., Jardine, William. Wilson's American Ornithology. United States: Charles L. Cornish, 1854.

2. Audubon and MacGillivray, Ornithological Biography, or an Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America ; Accompanied by Descriptions of the Objects Represented in the Work Entitled The Birds of America, and Interspersed with Delineations of American Scenery and Manners, 1834., 1:191.

3. De Voe, Thomas Farrington. The Market Assistant: Containing a Brief Description of Every Article of Human Food Sold in the Public Markets of the Cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn; Including the Various Domestic and Wild Animals, Poultry, Game, Fish, Vegetables, Fruits &c., &c. with Many Curious Incidents and Anecdotes. United States: Hurd and Houghton, 1867.

4. “The Wickedness and Folly of Bird Shooting.” Friends' Weekly Intelligencer. Vol. 27, No. 1, March 5, 1870; “Destruction to Property by Wild Birds in America.” Board of Trade Journal. United Kingdom: H.M. Stationery Office, 1889.

5. Recreation. League of American Sportsmen. United States: G.O. Shields (Coquina), 1902.; Pearson, Thomas Gilbert. Tales from Birdland. United States: Doubleday, Page, 1918.

6. Palmer, Theodore Sherman. Chronology and index of the more important events in American game protection, 1776-1911. United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1912, p. 7.

7. Langille, J. H. “Our Birds.” Fifty-Fourth Annual Report of the New York State Agricultural Society for the Year 1894. Albany: James B. Lyon, State Printer. 1895.

8. “The Wickedness and Folly of Bird Shooting.” Friends' Weekly Intelligencer. Vol. 27, No. 1, March 5, 1870.

9. American Journal of Horticulture and Florist's Companion. Boston: J. E. Tilton and Company., 1867.; “Twelfth Annual Report for the Board of Agriculture.” Concord, New Hampshire: New Hampshire Department of Agriculture, 1883.

10. Maynard, Lucy Warner. Birds of Washington and Vicinity: Including Adjacent Parts of Maryland and Virginia. United States: Woodward & Lothrop, 1902.

11. Trafton, Gilbert Haven. Bird Friends: A Complete Bird Book for Americans. United States: Houghton Mifflin, 1916.

12. Houghton, A. S. “Federal Protection for our Migratory Birds.” Field and Stream. United States: CBS Publications, 1910.

13. Recreation. League of American Sportsmen. United States: G.O. Shields (Coquina), 1902.

14. Hornaday, William Temple. Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation. United States: C. Scribner's sons, 1913.

15. Anderson, Margaret. “Slaughtering the Robin.” Field and Stream. United States: CBS Publications, 1910.; Pearson, T. Gilbert. “Slaughtering the Robin.” Field and Stream. United States: CBS Publications, 1910.

16. Northwest Poultry Journal and Pacific Homestead. United States: Stateman publishing Company, November 1926.