A Tale of a Friendly Robin

By Peter Finlay. Featured image shows a robin in Wales, photo credit: Keith O’Brien. Photos in the text below feature the robin of the tale on the Isle of Arran, credit to the author.

The Things that Really Matter

‘What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?’ So asked Welsh poet W. H. Davies back in 1911.

In the last few days I have been discovering more about this standing and staring business than I could ever have hoped for. It started, and I trust it will never finish, with a little robin that seems to have adopted me as his special friend. Standing just outside my cottage he came along and started to stay around for as long as I was around. All I have had to do is simply to stand, and not do much else. Maybe stare a bit as the poet advised. Then along comes my robin.

I first became aware of him on a day following something particularly stressful that had happened to me not far from my home. I had returned to the scene to cleanse my mind of what had occurred. First it was with the gentle murmuring sounds of the nearby stream. Then it was on my return from that stream when the robin appeared from nowhere as if on a mission to heal me of the hurts inflicted. What an amazing little creature! Certainly one of God’s own.

Now and again when we meet, sometimes I might give a little chirrup to it, or a gentle whistle. Sometimes I have a conversation with him and tell him good things about himself. Once I thought I would go so far as to buy some mealworms for him as an added attraction. I never got round to that and, even though I might do that some day, I am glad that so far I haven’t. There is something that bit more special when the robin comes simply and solely for the friendship, simply so that we can enjoy one another’s company, which is the way it has been till now, and amazingly looks like continuing to be.

By way of contrast a short while ago, as I was standing outside in the cold evening air, another bird appeared up in a rowan tree nearby. But this fellow, a tiny little great tit (If that is not too contradictory), wasted little time before telling me what he thought about me. Verbally I mean. At least it could have been ‘verbal’ if a good scolding falls into that category! Scold, scold, scold, scold, scold….first from the rowan, and then on into another tree, and then another. No doubt about it he was pretty displeased with my standing there. I wasn’t even staring – not at him not at anything that I knew of. Scolding was his business just as friendship seemed to be my robins.

After the scolding I continued to stand around some more and, despite the evening becoming colder by the minute, I hardly noticed the drop in temperature. Then my robin was there back with me and I was glad to see his feathers puffed up for extra warmth. He was some distance away – maybe 10 feet, and I was then suggesting he could come a bit closer. Maybe 6 feet, or 7 or 8 for a start. He didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to my quiet suggestions – until suddenly I had to look down to see him and he was only 4 feet away. Another moment and he was there at 2 feet, and then it was just one foot away from my big welly boot! In fact about 3 days before that he was up on the garden bench beside me when, next thing I knew, he had taken a couple of hops until he was perched right on my knee! No crumbs to entice, just this bond which he was setting up even as much as I was. We could, and probably should, call it love. The love that should be there between all creatures here on earth. The love, the trust that us humans have managed in our clumsy way to lose or even destroy.

Images started into my mind, memories from a childhood book with illustrations of St Francis with the creatures of the earth and sky gathered closely around him. What was his secret? The boundless love of God within him I have no doubt. The love that breaks down our human created barriers and enmities. How can we start to get past these barriers for ourselves? Do we have to go on a course to achieve a special, rare form of sanctity? Or is perhaps all that is required to step outside and to be ready to look foolish with a bit of standing and, maybe, staring too?

But then what a reward, not just for us but also for the creatures around as the love spreads outward. Perhaps it is a lot more simple with these creatures of the fields and sky than with those more in our own image. Yet at least it could be a start on the right path. The pathway towards healing. The discovery of the things that really matter.