our friendly robin

The winter weather has brought some unusual birds to our garden. A week or so ago we had a little flock of birds about the size of thrushes, but more colourful, with orangey plumage on their necks and chests. At around the same time the Guardian mentioned that its readers were reporting unusual bird sightings, and we learned from a photo that our own visitors were fieldfares. I’m sure I had never seen any in our part of London before.

For the past few days we’ve had an incredibly tame little robin in the garden. He seemed quite unafraid of us, and was happy to let us stand right underneath the tree and converse with him. He let me follow him round the garden with my camera, and he almost seemed to be posing for his photograph (see picture). I tried to communicate in what I thought were robin-like whistles until Bob told me to stop. ‘You’re probably saying something unacceptable.’