On Tuesday, September 11, 2012 8:43:14 AM UTC+1, Alastair wrote:
"Martin Brown" wrote in message

...



They are incredibly brave if you are disturbing the soil and will nip an

and nab worms from under your feet. Your resident male will be used to you

and considers it his garden - not yours!



We were clearing ivy off what were the flower beds this weekend which our

robin found very interesting. When we stopped to have our lunch on the

patio, the robin joined us making a great racket. Obvioulsy he thought that

we should continue with the digging and provide food for him, not be

relaxing with our own meal.



Cheers, Alastair.

You have to remember that robins are very territorial for most of the year. They cannot stray into another territory without being sent packing unless that other 'owner' robin is distracted for some reason.

This means that they are probably within watching distance of your garden for most of daylight hours. You may not see them all the time but they will see you.

They will soon realise that you are not a threat to them, but will always be wary because of the size of humans (this is not meant to be a disparaging remark by the way). So, they will watch you going about your gardening and see discover that they need to move quickly in order to eat the insects that are disturbed by whatever you are doing.

There is a theory that with small creatures, time appears to go much more slowly - in the same way that as children we have a somewhat similar experience of time compared to when we are much older. If this is the case, then your movements to a robin would appear slow and laborious; there would be no obvious problems with darting as close as possible to you in order to grab insects, because experience has taught the bird that even if you do move, it would be at a snails pace compared with their reaction time.