Robin's antics

I knew the robin in the garden was reasonably smart - he hangs around when I am moving the pots on the patio, waiting to grab any bugs exposed.

The fact that he doesn't get more I think might be owing to poor eyesight & quick grubs!

But I wasn't expecting prima-donna behaviour, but I'm sure that's what happened...

I was drying up the glasses in the kitchen, when I heard incredibly loud cheeping from the garden. Thinking it might be the wren, I was scanning the garden to see where it was...

Then I saw the robin on a pot - he was the one making the racket, and I felt he was looking directly at me.

I looked around to see what was disturbing him (I have never heard him make a row like that before), but couldn't see anything. He kept on making the noise and looking at me.

I was starting to think I was imagining this [weird, right?], and then I remembered the bird-feeder (now know as "robin feeder" because of the critter's aggressive teritorialness with the other birds!).

OK, I'll admit to talking to the robin (I don't have any cats!), so I was asking him if he was hungry & wanted me to fill up the seed hopper.

The response I got was he flew onto the kitchen windowsill & looked directly at me & carried on yelling!

So, feeling I was getting the message, I went outside to fill up the feeder. The robin flew into a viburnum (about 4' from the feeder - the garden's only 12' long so nothing is far from anything else!).

At this point he'd stopped chirping. I moved away from the feeder & he hopped to a pot nearer to it, so I went back indoors.

I'd just got back to the kitchen window when he flew onto the feeder - no noise, no giving me a beady eye, he just grabbed a few grains & went.

I used to have a squirrel that had got me trained to take out food when she banged on the window, but was the robin really calling for me?

I think so...

But who knows?