For about a couple of weeks now, a baby robin has been making very bold advances at my workplace, darting around the outdoors kitchen area and fixing those who cross its path with a gimlet eye that says, ‘Feed me, you inadequate human, or I shall seek you out in dark corners and haunt you. I shall become your worst living nightmare…mwahahahahaha!’
This isn’t the ACTUAL baby robin, but it’s a remarkable likeness in colour, size and speckledness…
So, because I am a sucker for all birdie creatures, except for a) the Idiot Bantams who are STILL alive and b) our resident sparrowhawk who persists in attempting murder most horrid on the small birdies who dine Chez Damson Cottage, I’ve taken to crushing up peanuts and tempting the baby robin into my calming aura, for I am determined to become one of those people who post photos of themselves on Instagram with a robin perched on their finger along with the caption ‘Me and My Robin Friend.’
I have to say this baby robin hasn’t taken much tempting. It is a brazen baby robin. A strumpet of a robin. A robin who knows no fear especially when it comes to crushed peanuts.
And last Thursday, it took an actual piece of peanut from the actual palm of my hand! I felt the flutter of its wings and the little dab of its beak as it nabbed a bit o’peanut and flew off. Crikey, we’d met barely a week before!
This morning it took another piece of peanut from me. And sat under my chair at tea break time. Me and my robin chum - we’re like that! (And by ‘that’ I mean I am crossing my fore and middle fingers together to illustrate the closeness. I realise this does not translate well in the written form but I think you get the gist…?)
Now, the volunteer workers who I look after are quite entranced by the baby robin. They have tried holding out their hands to it but it appears to trust only one of them, the one who doesn’t lunge at it and who speaks gently to it, rather than yelling, ‘HELLO BABY ROBIN, HERE’S A PEANUT!’ before launching it at the robin’s head.
And that volunteer worker, of the gentle touch, has decided that the baby robin is a girl baby robin, and that she needs a name because we can’t keep calling it ‘baby robin.’
When asked what we should call it then, I was met with a shrug and a promise to think about it.
I have a sneaking suspicion it may end up being called ‘Bob.’
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