Robin

The dearest little garden companion bonny and oh so naughty!

Where to start with Robins, do they merit a capital letter? I don’t know and I’m not googling it. The Robin I spent yesterday afternoon with, whilst tidying up the little flower bed that runs along my grandmar Sheila’s little bungalow, was very much, his own person so he can have a capital R. I mulched the beds over with compost and he kept me company, springing in and out of the bushes. He pecked up the worms that my foot work called them to the soils surface.

Who could not love a Robin? Anyone who couldn’t is not a soul worth knowing. Its Christmas, almost and the cottage here is adorned with them as decorations. An especially lovely big fat one came from Amsterdam’s The Vintage Christmas Company.

I love birds, I’m an avianist at heart but there is something perfectly chocolate boxed yet naughty about this little, perfect bobbing round blob of a bird on his or hers wire legs, completely set off to the world and to the human eye by those breast feathers. They constantly bounce, don’t they? Dunnocks are very similar to Robins, otherwise called hedge sparrows. Like robins, they frequent gardens willingly and they are fine songsters yet they lack any bright feathers and so they are often not noticed. The same unnoticed fate has indeed become that of the Nightingale, now most certainly one of our most forgotten songsters and rare. The days of a Nightingale singing in Berkeley Square are alas long gone but a robin I’d imagine can occasionally be heard singing here. If you walk through London in the very early hours, Robins often can be heard singing due to the street lights. Research suggests (unsurprisingly) that this does these little birds not much good as they use up more energy singing away when they should be roosting to conserve it.

For Nightingales who are migratory, you have to book on a Knepp estates night time safari in May. Knepp is now a famous stronghold for the few Nightingales that make it to British shores. Its re -wilded estate, hosts more Nightingales than anywhere else thanks to its dense hedges and brambles. To hear them here, the safari carries a price tag that could otherwise happily purchase a cage of very well voiced Gloucester canaries who would sing all the year round but would need a lot of room service! I love these canaries with their Beatle like little feathered hats! Knepp Estate

The iconic plumes of the robin have made it a pin up amongst garden birds, though they are not red, lets face it, they are orange. I suppose that ‘When the orange, orange robin comes bob, bob bobbing along’ does not sit as well as when the red, red one does. Visually its all bliss to us but robin to robin relations are fierce indeed. Our gardens, the bird tables and shrubberies that robins frequent are battlegrounds, often aiding the robins classically, bold expression of alertness.

One of my first substack notes mentioned a remarkable book, that was republished this almost past year - Birds as Individuals by Len Howard. This is much recommended, few works have documented the bullying, determination and jealously of these little birds, who cherub like to us are real devils to their own kin. Their is little kinship among robins unless they are an arguable pair and the pairing up of Robins does not happen until late winter. Male robins beforehand, must stake out a territory that is thought to be some 5,000 square meters in size as a minimum so that’s easily several town gardens their raging little hormones force them to defend. Whilst snowy Christmas card scenes of robins are abound at this time of the year, hard winters see Robin numbers especially struggle as those that do not have a territory do not easily survive.

The male Robins who do hold a court will pair up with a prospective female by February and to keep her content the male will forage insects for her to strengthen the pairs bond. This spring we had a pair of robins nest in the woody stump of a perennial wallflower bush. This particular perennial was growing in a dolly tub and the base of the plant was protected from the tubs solid rim. The parents worked tirelessly, coming and going all through the day from dawn until dusk. I worried about hanging the washing out but luckily this did not phase the busy couple. 2024 was not a dry summer and so the parents did not seem to have a hard time in finding the vital insects and worms for the chicks. In dry spells, the offering of water soaked meals worms and cat biscuits are known to be a great aid to parent garden birds when they cannot grub about a hard baked soils surface.

And so, yes my grandmothers robin, who is not anyone’s but that’s the beauty of garden birds, isn’t it? They are all claimed by us and I quite like that, such lines as ‘My blue tits are getting through so much suet lately’ sound very much like a line Judi Dench would say in a period drama.

One of my favourite charities working on the ground and protecting songbirds from poaching each spring and autumn especially during peak migration time is CABS - which stands for - Committee against bird slaughter. Robins in particular are still trapped in Italy using the innocently titled bow trap, they are trapped along with many other songbirds to be eaten . A bow traps mechanics are set with extreme brutality: a small stick and a string keep the bow, under tension. Birds are attracted by rowan berries and are tempted to settle on the horizontally mounted stick. When they touch it, the bow rushes apart. In just a fraction of a second, the birds hang upside down with their legs then being completely broken, the photos of such barbarous activities can be seen on the CABS Instagram account . I am glad to shine a light on the hard and often dangerous work they are doing on the ground in trying to halt the dreadful killing of our beautiful songbirds that belong to the whole world not just one country or race.

CABS website -

At home however, much can be done to help our garden birds to thrive and have safe havens, namely to resist totally tidying up the garden. Birds need shelter if they are to thrive so don’t cut and hack the whole garden up to a blank, clean canvas in one afternoon. We cannot treat our flower beds like a kitchens surface! Some mess and decay should be allowed, leave the leaves, provide a bird bath above all somewhere safe, off the ground perhaps with a surround of pots to allow little birds to bathe out of any harmful eyes view. My gardens planting is changing for the better of having a structural garden full of flowering shrubs and climbers. I am especially glad of a large female holly tree that grows in the neighbours garden, a complete bird magnet.

It is especially wonderful to see the garden birds love their bird bath which is just a frost proof plant saucer. I clean it weekly and refresh it whenever I am in the garden. Now is also the time to be sighting nesting boxes in good time before birds begin nesting or cleaning out old ones. I don’t tend to feed the birds with bird feeders because I think most look awful and those that are not kept clean do more harm than good to little birds as they easily harbour bacteria such as tit pox! YES! Tit Pox! Can you imagine such a thing!

Rather than putting out lots of bird seed that often attracts grey squirrels and large birds such as jackdaws, I grow annuals that provide rich seed heads that in turn become natural bird feeders through much of the autumn and early winter weeks.

Some of my favourites include -

Panicum ‘Sparkling Fountain’ or ‘Frosted Explosion’ wonderful in pots, such a fizz! - photo taken of it yesterday, quite dead now as an annual but it remains with its sparkler seed filled plumes.

Millet ‘ Red Jewel’ like a little paint brush.

Amarathus all of them but ‘Hot Biscuit’ and ‘Red Army’

Sunflowers especially good are the multi stemmed ones such as ‘Magic Roundabout’

What are you doing to help garden birds? Arthur.