Doctor Robin

Every year Tom puts together an annual calendar around a particular photographic theme. This year, the theme is Wester Ross and it will go on sale shortly (Wester Ross club members: you’ll be able to use your discount!). This robin, whom Tom met on the shores of Loch Maree, was one of his calendar contenders, but missed out, because as Tom pointed out, this photograph is much more robin than landscape, and other robins have been featured on other calendars in previous years. Other robins, yes, Tom, but not this robin! Personally I’d like an entire calendar of robins, or indeed of just this robin! For who can deny its individual avian appeal! Look at those irridescent feathers! Those distinctive wing markings! That quizzical, jaunty air!

Robins are probably my favourite bird, and I’m not alone, as a significant majority of people in Britain seem to feel the same.

I love them for many reasons and perhaps most of all because they are, in ornithological speak, such extraordinarily confiding birds. One of the many delights of gardening is, when quietly pottering about, to become suddenly aware of a pair of bright black eyes peering at you from a nearby hedge or fence post. A robin!

I particularly enjoy robins in the garden at this time of year. As I’m clearing dead leaves and planting bulbs there’s always one a foot or two away, hopping about, keeping it’s eye on what I’m doing, before opportunistically checking the disturbed ground for a meal.

I find the robin’s song particularly delightful. It’s also one of the easiest to recognise, because (wrens, perhaps excepted) robins are the only birds you’ll hear singing in the garden at this time of year (at least here in Scotland). Those of you in Canada and the USA may not have heard a European robin, whose song is quite different to the “cheer, up, cheer up,” call with which you’ll be familiar: the phrasing of a European robin trickles about, in a much more mellifluous, watery, meandering sort of a way. Unlike many birds, they don’t repeat a song pattern, and, after a characteristic beginning with a couple of high notes, each short phrase always differs slightly from the next. Sometimes the phrase ends on a downturn, sometimes with an upward lift, and though it is often described as melancholy or plaintive, I always hear ringing or bell-like or flute-like tones in it that do not seem melancholy at all. Perhaps because I listen to robins most in Autumn and Winter (when they are not drowned out by the “sweet wild notes” of migrating Summer warblers), their song to me always seems joyous, vital, bright: an energetic golden lift on a grey, dull day.

Male and female robins are tricky to tell apart, so when greeting them in the garden (as I do on a daily basis), it’s best to use a gender-neutral honorific. I prefer “Doctor” Robin myself, but “Professor” or “Reverend” Robin would work just as well.

Anyway, although I’m sad that Doctor Robin did not make it onto Tom’s calendar, I hope you’ve enjoyed these pictures from Loch Maree as much as I have!

Look out for Tom’s gorgeous, entirely robin-free, Wester Ross landscapes calendar in a couple of weeks time! And sign-ups for the Wester Ross club are open, if you’d like to join us.