All week I have been telling the family that I have a dream of seeing a robin in our new garden.  If I saw a robin, I said, it would make everything better.  Of course, an empty bird-feeder and two warring cats did not help.  I spent two days giving off about the cats, shooing them away and generally blaming them for everything.  My failure to get bird seed had nothing to do with it.  Of course.

But then, a couple of nights ago on another errand in Dobbies I walked past the bird seed aisle and finally put some bags in the trolley.  The next morning I filled up the only feeder I could find with peanuts and scattered mixed seed on the bird table.  I went inside and waited.  Not long after,  I saw a brown bird at the end of the garden.  Like a mad woman I started telling it (out loud) to turn around, and there it was – a promising flash of red!

Word must have spread then because when I was at the kitchen sink later, at least seven tits and finches swooped down from the tree they were perched on above the bordering bushes.  He was the last one to arrive, waiting until the others had gone, but then, to my great happiness, there he was, feeding to his heart’s content.  Our first robin.  The first Christmas in our new house has begun!