Birthday Robin

On Monday, Judith turns 60 (as you well know). Because that's a weekday, and I haven't yet retired, we went out for dinner yesterday evening, to El Botellon, a new(ish) tapas restaurant that has recently opened on the High Road and is probably a symbol of the manner in which Tottenham has begun to shake off its previous reputation and is beginning to move upscale, gentrifying in the way that Hoxton and Shoreditch did a couple of decades ago (and as a consequence of which have now become too expensive for the young middle-class professionals who "rescue" such areas from their post-industrial slump). This morning, we had breakfast in the conservatory, in the sunshine -- despite the storm surges and flooding that characterised the two months from late December to early February, it's been a mild winter, and the temperatures this weekend have nudged up to 17-18 degrees C, which is unprecedented for this time of year.





In other news, we have a robin building a nest in a box of gardening items on a shelf outside our back door. Robins are renowned for building their nests in all sorts of places -- they've even been known to nest inside garden sheds -- and this one obviously has no problems with our proximity. At first, we thought it was a male; but when we checked, we learned that it's the females which build the nests, while the males do absolutely no work whatever (apart, of course, from eating-shooting-and-leaving). Sunny days are when it's most active, bringing in bits of dried grass and moss to furnish the nest; it stays away on dull and overcast days, for reasons that are not at all apparent. It hasn't yet started roosting overnight in the nest, but given the speed at which spring is advancing -- the pear tree is near to bud-burst, for example -- it can't be too long before the first eggy pops ite.

The last three of the photographs below were taken this very morning -- it was sitting in a several prominent places, cheeping occasionally. We suspect this behaviour occurs when it's trying to attract a mate.