--- title: Garden birds: robins, blackbirds, tits and feeders — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Garden birds: robins, blackbirds, tits and feeders», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Start digging in a garden and a robin will often hop down beside your spade within minutes, because every turn of the s --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Garden birds: robins, blackbirds, tits… # Garden birds: robins, blackbirds, tits and feeders Lesson 216 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 14 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/0/) — Start digging in a garden and a robin will often hop down beside your spade within minutes, because every turn of the soil brings up worms and grubs for it. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/1/) — Long before there were gardeners, robins followed wild boar rooting through the forest floor for exactly the same reason. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/2/) — That cheerful robin is also one of the fiercest birds in the garden: its red breast is a warning flag, and it will fight other robins to keep its patch, even singing to defend it all through the winter. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/3/) — A garden is a busy bird town, with blackbirds listening and looking for worms, blue tits hanging upside down, tiny wrens shouting their songs and, at dusk, starlings swirling in clouds of thousands. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/4/) — Robins follow gardeners because digging brings worms and insects to the surface, and in the wild they follow wild boar for the same reason. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/6/) — Robins are fierce defenders of territory; their red breast warns rivals away, and in experiments they attacked even a bunch of red feathers on a stick. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/7/) — A blackbird tilts its head on the lawn while looking, and maybe listening, for worms; only males are black, while females are brown, which helps them hide on the nest. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/8/) — Blue tits hang upside down to pick insects from the tips of twigs, and in Britain last century tits learned to open the tops of milk bottles, a trick that spread from bird to bird. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/9/) — Birds may nest in a nest box in spring, and the size of the hole decides which birds can use it; a small hole keeps out bigger birds that would take the eggs or chicks. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/10/) — Winter feeding helps small birds survive, because short days leave little time to find food and on a cold night a small bird can lose a noticeable part of its weight keeping warm. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/11/) — Birds crash into windows because they see reflected trees and sky, and stickers on the glass break up the reflection. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/13/) — Fledglings often leave the nest before they can fly well and are still fed by their parents, so a feathered baby bird on the ground is usually best left alone. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/14/) — A huge swirling cloud of starlings at dusk is called a murmuration; flying together keeps them safer from hawks, and each bird watches only its nearest neighbours. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/216-garden-birds-robins-blackbirds-tits-and-feeders/15/) — The tiny wren has one of the loudest songs for its size, which carries through thick bushes. - ← previous: [Foxes and squirrels](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/215-foxes-and-squirrels/) - next →: [Worms, snails and slugs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/217-worms-snails-and-slugs/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)