My favorite robin is an English robin. But I didn't know they existed outside of nursery rhyme books until I went there and saw one. I imagine most of us think of the little robin redbreast that sat on apple boughs in the picture books of childhood as the fanciful figments of poetic imagination. If we think of them at all. Those fat cheery little birds with a puff of ruddy breast feathers. They do not look at all like the "real" robins that are so ubiquitous in our yards and gardens.
My first glimpse of the nursery rhyme robin was outside a bed and breakfast atop Offa's Dyke just over the border from Wales and a few miles up the Wye River from Tintern. I was happy to be here. It was my 4th B&B since Tintern, the others having no room at the inn, but I had been assured by the 3rd one that Offa's Mead was holding a room for me. The view from the drive spread out over the Wye Valley, green and gold in the waning sunlight. A bird feeder hung from a tree beside the driveway, and when I turned toward the house I spotted the robin. Small. Plump. Tiny red breast. He darted from his perch on the feeder and lost himself among the leaves. So quick it was almost a dream. And the only picture I have is in my head.
Five years later, back in England, in the Lake District this time, I set out to walk from Ambleside to Rydal Water. It's a setting I am using in my next novel, Ghosts of Great Britain, and I wanted to reaquaint myself with the landscape. This fellow wasn't the first one I encountered this trip, and he wasn't the last. But he was the only one who sat for his portrait.
