Robin Appoints Itself Supervisor of All Digging in the Garden

At ten past nine on Saturday morning, a spade went into the vegetable bed at number six Lark Lane, and within four seconds a robin was standing on the handle of the wheelbarrow, chest out, watching. He has asked us to make clear that this was not a coincidence. He is, by his own account, the supervisor of all digging in this garden, and has been since the autumn.

The appointment was not advertised. There was no interview and no other candidate, largely because the robin saw off the other candidate, a second robin, somewhere near the compost bin in October. "The post was vacant," he said, from the top of a bean cane. "I filled it. The garden has run smoothly ever since."

His duties, as he describes them, are considerable. He attends every session of digging, weeding and raking, usually from a distance of about one metre, which he calls the inspection zone. He examines each spadeful of turned soil personally. Anything that wriggles is removed for further study and does not come back. "People assume I am here for the worms," he said. "I am here for standards. The worms are a matter of paperwork."

The gardener, a retired bus driver who took up vegetables two springs ago, has a different view of the arrangement. She says she believed for some weeks that she had made a friend. The robin has been informed of this and considers it a reasonable thing for a junior colleague to think. He notes that she is keen, turns up on time and has a good arm for a trench, but that her edges wander and she stops for tea far too often, at which point all useful digging ends and he is left on a fork handle with nothing to inspect.

He has raised several further points. The new raised bed was built without consultation. The garden fork was left out in the rain on Wednesday, which he knows because he was sitting on it. And the trowel, he feels, is beneath the dignity of everyone involved: it turns up almost nothing. He would like to see more work done with the big spade, ideally in the damp corner by the rhubarb, ideally before breakfast.

Asked whether he might one day share the role, the robin sang for eleven seconds from the top of the shed, very loudly, in the direction of next door's hedge. We understand this to be a no.

The real idea behind it

Robins really do follow gardeners, and it is one of the reasons people are so fond of them. A robin eats worms, grubs and insects that live in the soil, and fresh digging brings all of those to the surface at once. It is thought that robins learned the trick long before there were gardens, by following large woodland animals such as wild boar as they rooted through the forest floor. To a robin, a person with a spade is doing the same helpful job, just more slowly and with more tea breaks.

The fierce sense of ownership is real as well. Robins hold a territory and defend it with song, and unlike most garden birds they keep singing through the autumn and winter, males and females alike, each guarding a patch of their own. So the small round bird that seems to be keeping you company is doing two jobs at once: watching your spade, and telling every other robin in earshot that this garden, and this gardener, are taken.