The New Boss

No self-respecting garden should be without one.

I'm referring, of course, to a resident robin, a boss robin, of which, recently, we've been lacking. Time was, in a previous house, we had more robins squabbling in the garden than we could cope with but, in our new house, while the front garden did seem to have visits from an occasional robin, the back didn't have one at all.

Happily, the other day the situation was rectified by the arrival of this chap. He quickly made himself at home and, within a day or two, was seen chasing a rival out of his property.

He's a bit odd in some ways. For a start, he seems to spend most of his time on the ground, crouching. I thought that one explanation might be that he only had one leg but he's definitely got two. And he moves around on the ground a bit like a dunnock, quite fast, skulking under bushes and behind rocks, and seeming to avoid flying. A bad experience with a sparrowhawk might explain this.

He has one weakness: he loves the fat cakes we put out. The only other birds that like them as much as he does are Mr and Mrs Blackbird, whom we suspect are nesting in the gorse bush at the bottom of the garden.

It's such a relief that we have our own robin. A garden without one is.... unthinkable.