Introducing the most ravenous robin

ABOUT this time of year, I always take a few days off to prepare the garden for winter. I lift the turnips and stake the brassicas and spread fresh manure over everything— including myself. However, having been forced to neglect all things horticultural for the past 18 months (owing, I assure you, to poor health and not laziness, although, as it happens, I am quite lazy), I haven’t had that much to do.

I have confined myself to a bit of pruning, applying grease bands to the pear trees (apparently, it stops wingless moths from climbing the trunks and laying their eggs in the branches —not that we have ever been bothered by wingless moths, but, whatever) and some rough spadework. The last of these activities has been of great interest to our resident robin who, with considerable originality, we have named: Robin.

Robin was hatched four or five years ago in an old hub cap that, for reasons no one can remember, was balanced somewhat precariously on one of the rafters in the stables. He quickly marked out the kitchen garden as his territory, seeing off all comers. Frankly, he has a vicious temper and even the magpies steer well clear of him.

During the spring and summer, he more or less ignores us, but once the weather turns cold, he moves his centre of operations to the kitchen windowsill, from

which he monitors our movements and begs for scraps. As the poet James Thomson put it 300 years ago:

The Redbreast,

sacred to the household gods,

Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,

In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves

His shivering mates, and pays to trusted Man

His annual visit.’ By turns, Robin is annoying (he has the habit of tapping on the glass to get our attention), amusing (he makes a comic figure peering in to see what we are up to) and entertaining (he has a beautiful singing voice). He is also surprisingly intelligent. If I leave the house with secateurs, for example, he ignores me, but if I am carrying a spade, he is right there behind me, eager to see what I might turn up in the way of grubs or worms. Anyone employing the expression ‘eats like a bird’ to describe a person who pecks at their food clearly has no experience of robins, which have voracious appetites.

Indeed, watching Robin wolfing down an oatmeal biscuit this week, it occurred to me that I might be able to train him to do some tricks. For methodology, I turned to Sir Edward Grey, who, when he wasn’t being Foreign Secretary, was a keen ornithologist. His system is simplicity itself.

First, the robin eats food you have scattered on the ground, next from a box you have placed on the ground and then from a box you are holding in the palm of your hand. Finally, you remove the box and the robin eats the food while balancing on your fingers. Or not. Despite hours of patient work, we haven’t progressed beyond the box on the ground stage.

Perhaps it will prove more successful in the New Year, when

Robin is hungrier. After all, winter, to misquote Shakespeare, tames man, woman, beast and bird.

Throughout the process, I couldn’t help thinking of another ornithological baron, Sir Arthur Streeb-greebling, also known as Peter Cook, whose avian activities were regularly covered by the BBC.

Interviewer: ‘Is it difficult to get ravens to fly underwater?’ Sir Arthur: ‘Well, I think the word difficult is an awfully good one here. Yes, it is. It’s well-nigh impossible… There they are sitting on my wrist. I say: “Fly! Fly you little devils!”… (Then) they drown… We’re knee-deep in feathers off that part of the coast.’

I must stress that no birds were harmed in my own training sessions, unless one counts Robin’s increased risk of coronary disease as a result of all the cheese he has wheedled out of me.

Anyone employing the expression “eats like a bird” clearly has no experience of robins

If Robin has dominated my outdoor week, a very different sort of creature has dominated my indoor week. The house is overrun with spiders. There are, apparently, more than 1,000 species in Ireland, but, despite crawling around on the floor and poking about in the attic and basement with field guide in hand, I have only been able to identify a dozen or so. They do, at least, have wonderfully evocative names, my favourites being the zebra jumping spider, the false widow spider and the pirate spider.

Apparently, they come inside at this time of year in search of a mate. I can’t say I like the idea of hosting an arachnoid orgy, but nor do I like to turn them out into the cold. Moreover, on the plus side, they have turned the house into a no-fly zone.

Jonathan Self is the author

of Good Money, Become an Ethical Entrepreneur (Head of Zeus) and a rawdog-food maker (www. honeysrealdogfood.com) who lives in Co Cork, Ireland Next week Lucy Baring