Reflections
Rosamond enjoys watching a special family of birds from her window
Rosamond Richardson enjoys watching a special family of birds in her garden
ATRIPLE-PRONGED FEEDER stands outside the studio window, next to a hedge providing cover for the birds as they wait their turn. Among the shrubs a Rosa andersonii briar, gnarled with age, arches over the patio, providing a convenient launchpad as they line up for seeds and suet balls. A trailing nasturtium, self-seeded, scrambles over the terrace walls and under the feeder. Acanthus, hellebores and a white clematis mingle in this secluded corner of the cottage garden. The studio doubles as a bird hide, affording illicit distraction when I’m meant to be working. The usual suspects – Greenfinches, Bluetits, Great Tits, House Sparrows, Chaffinches, Dunnocks, Longtailed Tits, a Great Spotted Woodpecker – visit at regular times of day, taking turns, always competing. My resident Robin among them, of course. I saw him on the suet balls one afternoon before noticing, perched on the briar, a brown bird. Pretty much just that, with its back to me, an LBJ, little brown job, plump with speckled head. As I watched, the Robin on the feeder darted on to the branch and fed it a morsel of fat. Then again. The little brown bird hopped and turned sideways on to me: it was a young Robin, fresh-feathered with streaked face and spotted thrush-chest, buff and chestnut wings, handsomely marked with a yellowish wing-bar, and grey underparts. It was joined by a second youngster, slightly smaller. The parent bird hopped to and fro feeding his offspring, then started to cajole them into having a go at helping themselves – to comical effect: it took one of the young birds most of the afternoon to get the knack of holding on to the wire frame of the feeder before inserting beak to reach seeds. The second bird didn’t get it at all, sat there on his branch looking abject and hopeful in turn. Robins have always been special. William Blake famously wrote, “A Robin redbreast in a cage/puts all heaven in a rage”, and to harm a Robin was always thought to bring evil consequences. Yet, it used to be the custom in medieval times in Britain to hunt and eat them, roasted with breadcrumbs, and Robins were still common fare in 17th Century England, eaten for what was claimed to be their medicinal properties. Luckily, things change. To Roger Deakin, Robins are the angels of my vegetable garden. You turn round and they’re not there. Then there they are, next to you. A man who devoted himself to investigating Robin facts was evolutionary biologist and ecologist David Lack who wrote a classic based on his field studies, ‘The Life of the Robin’. His hours of observation led him to conclude that the world of a Robin is so strange and remote from our experience that into it we can scarcely penetrate, except to see dimly how different it must be from our own .... [we] deceive [ourselves] into assuming that the mind that inspires them is not unlike the human mind. He ends his monograph with a quote from philosopher Francis Bacon: “It is strange how men, like owls, see sharply in the darkness of their own notions, but in the daylight of experience wink and are blinded”. It was a while before I saw my family of Robins again at the feeders. When they returned, the juveniles were still plump, strong-looking, fresh and shiny. The older one’s smart chestnut speckles were now freckled with scarlet. A splash of rust-red was beginning to spread like a blush from underneath his wing. Summer passed. The last time I saw one of them was in early September. His head and face were still speckled, and the rust-red blush had spread further – he reminded me of a spotty teenager – and the underparts had turned whiter. I might never see him again, this unique, plucky little creature: he would be driven off my patch by his territorial father to establish his own, and if he survived village cats and the perils and dangers of being a young bird, perhaps I would hear him singing his autumn song on one of my walks up the lane into the fields. Rosamond Richardson is an author and journalist who also writes for The Countryman, and her Waiting for the Albino Dunnock will be published in spring 2017
The little brown bird hopped and turned sideways on to me: it was a young Robin, fresh-feathered with streaked face and spotted thrush-chest, buff and chestnut wings handsomely marked with a yellowish wing-bar, and grey underparts