I now accept he’s gone. Most days for the last 6 or 7 years, we saw each other. And now, after the summer is over, he no longer comes to greet me, perching at eye level on my allotment door, looking right in my face, as I unlock it. 

He had been going through the summer moult, whereby robins naturally shed their old flight feathers, looking temporarily rather scrappy and flightless; and they tend to hide away at this vulnerable time. 

And then he never reappeared.

Small wild birds tend to have short life spans: only 13 months on average in the case of Robins, due to the high mortality in their first year. So my friend was at least 7 years old and had, I think, a good life. I would give him sunflower seeds in the cold of winter. Unless it was freezing, he always preferred catching his own insects to my seeds, and he would regularly ignore my offerings and swoop down to my feet to pounce on any invertebrate I had disturbed by my heavy feet on the leaf litter. Robins have evolved to follow large herbivores like boar and ancient aurochs as they disturbed the soil, and I’m a handy lumbering replacement.

Yet our relationship was not solely based on food. He often just liked to sit on a low branch right next to me on my garden bench and didn’t want food at all. Since this is my ‘sit spot’ where I regularly spend time, we were often together and I fondly recall summer evenings quietly with him in the gloaming. 

There was a trust between us, and Robin, as well as being typically bold and perky, also felt safe, and would bathe in my nearby small pond without any nervousness, unlike the other garden birds.

He would flit into the poly tunnel with me, get almost under my trowel as I planted, and I was always concerned not to inadvertently shut him in the garden shed when I locked it. He loved darting around in the shed catching spiders.

I talked to him and sometimes he would burble back. He would often talk with snatches of sub-song and tweets, sounds which I wouldn’t previously have guessed came from a robin, unless I’d heard and seen it. He also liked to sing perched on a branch right above my head, and I would regularly move over on my bench to avoid his droppings.

Robins have large shiny and mysteriously dark liquid eyes. They can see well into the twilight and hence are among the last birds to retire for the night. 

He – and he was a he – would chase off other robins from his territory, which centred on my allotment. Each Spring he would pair up and bring a female mate, but she was always much more timid. They had many young over the years, often nesting in one of the nest boxes I had fixed on the walls of my shed.

I miss you, my friend. I imagine when I start to feed the birds again in the winter, another robin is likely to befriend me. Robins have an archetypally bold and fearless character – the ‘gardener’s friend’ – yet they are all individuals, as we all are. 

When we sat together quietly of an evening, I would often settle into a meditative frame of mind and who could say that we weren’t communing in meditation? I kind of felt that we were. After all, mind is not really inside us; we are all in mind. And if we are attuned, we are sharing the same field.

Many years ago, I wrote this little couplet about Robins:

“Robin’s song in winter may sound thin

Yet it resounds where seasons can never touch”

I am very grateful for Robin’s friendship