This little robin, who I have called Robbo, comes to within literally inches of me.
Not feet. Not arm’s length. Inches. He's even sat on my hat.
He stands there, looking up with complete curiosity, as though he is trying to decide what sort of strange creature I am.
His parents, meanwhile, have a rather better grasp of risk. The moment a cat appears they erupt into alarm calls, while Junior appears to wonder what all the fuss is about.
For now, I seem to have passed whatever test robins apply to humans. I am not a threat. I am simply part of the garden. His parents follow me up the garden sometimes and sit nearby, even when I'm making a racket with the ride-on-mower. It's in the nature of Robins to find humans interesting.
It will not last. In a few weeks his parents will stop seeing him as a child and start seeing him as a rival. They will drive him away because that is what robins do.
I hope he settles nearby. It would be rather nice if, one day, an adult robin with a bright red breast landed within inches of me and, for reasons known only to robins, remembered that I had always been one of the safe ones.
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