The Mary Poppins thread has merely served to remind me that they used an American Robin (Turdus migratorius) and not a Eurasian Robin (Erithacus rubecula) and I will never forgive them. Why yes, since you ask, I am fun at parties.
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I saw Mary Poppins for the first time last year and was some way in before I realised it wasn't meant to be America. The architecture is American, the furniture, even the trees. Dick Van Dyke didn't help.
Yes! Even seeing this movie as a little kid, this annoyed the heck out of me. Especially because, having read The Secret Garden with the amazing Tasha Tudor illustrations, I wanted an adorable English robin!
A couple of incongruous birds appear in Wales in How Green Was My Valley. I guess we can forgive that, as they are real birds, and it was filmed in the USA.
This distinction caused endless difficulty between my American other half and I: “That’s not a Robin,” she’d state both confidently (she knows a lot more about nature than I do) and accurately (sort of). “It definitely is,” I’d counter, also confidently and accurately…
Everyone i knew when we watched it as kids went 'that's not a robin?' (there were a lot, it was green suburbia)
Bit like finding out Tuck in Robin Hood was supposed to be a badger a few years ago. We thought he was just a very fat weasel because American badgers look nothing like uk ones.
I'm fairly sure that I once remarked on this and was told what a bore I was by my wife. (I too am fun at parties.) Somehow the "wrong robin" is annoying in a way that all of the other unrealistic elements of the film are not.
Ecological pedantry is my fave niche cinematic anachronism too. Georgians walking in fields of Himalayan balsam, tightly mown lawns before the Flymo, random Oxford ragwort before the railway age etc oh and that goony bird call
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What Is the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow?
I don’t know… — AAAAAAAAAA
It's towards the end...
We can sit side-by-side at parties.
*Yes, I do lie about late on Sunday mornings, what of it?
(😄)
Bit like finding out Tuck in Robin Hood was supposed to be a badger a few years ago. We thought he was just a very fat weasel because American badgers look nothing like uk ones.
Thank you.
You Are Not Alone!
[Wandering Thrush joins the Chat]