Peter Stockland on what robins can remind us about life and death.

By Peter Stockland June 4, 2014

1 minute read

Outside our back door there is a tree and in the overlap of its coniferous branches is a small, obscured, protected space where a robin has built a nest.

In the nest, two chicks have hatched, and the robin spends her days as a kind of avian FedEx courier bringing worms and grubs and dropping them into tiny beaks that never seem to close with satiety.

My wife spends her early mornings and evenings standing unobtrusively on a chair photographing the comings and goings and the constant maternal care. When I come out on the porch, by contrast, through some shimmering signal shot through Creation, the robin evidently knows a stranger is at hand and flies around the yard in ways clearly designed to lead a designated predator—me—away from her nest.

You'll also enjoy...

Entering In

To follow in the footsteps of the faithful who have come before shapes our path to glory.

The Extraordinary Ordinariness

In a lovely, reflective article by Charles McGrath, who identifies himself as Munro's first editor at the New Yorker Magazine in the 1970s, Munro confirms that a lifetime of short story writing has come to an end In fact, between the publication of her first book and the sixth that she produced as s...

Bring Back the King

Having been a small child in the last years before Canada dumped its red Royal Mailboxes into the dustbin of history, I have always considered the British Crown a useless necessity Yet anyone who has brush history knows aed up against the leasts a matter of fact that for more than 400 years, the Bri...