Tweet07-01-2011 om 17:52 by Sueli Brodin

The winter started early this year and the cold and snowy weather of the past weeks has made it difficult for birds to find food and build up their fat reserves.

The Dutch organisation for the protection of birds is even asking people with a garden to hang suet fat balls and bird feeders with seeds for hungry birds.



My husband has always liked birds. As a child he used to make bird houses and sell them to his neighbours. He also kept a few in his garden and enjoyed watching the birds that would come there every day. When we settled down into our first home in South Limburg, one of first things he wanted for our garden was a bird house.

My children have followed in his footsteps and have become bird lovers too. The four of them seem to know the names of every single bird we see around. They have assembled a big collection of books and encyclopaedias about birds and like learning and talking about the characteristics of their favourite species. They are even often able to recognise many birds through their songs.



Every winter my husband and my children fill several bird feeders with sunflower and cereal seeds and hang up suet fat balls along the wall of our shed.

Many little birds visit daily and help themselves at the feeders. My children like observing them from our kitchen window and even keep a pair of binoculars close at hand on the windowsill.



Our most common guests are sparrows, bluetits, greenfinches, but occasionally woodpeckers also find their way to our garden.

And then something very special happened this year: for the first time, a little robin appeared on the fence.



We had never seen one in our garden before.



We all looked at it through the binoculars and tried to be as silent and quiet as possible, so as not to scare it away. The little robin quickly located the feeders and started eating some sunflower seeds.



And then it looked towards us, as if to smile and say thank you.

When it left, we wondered if it would come back and visit us again. But luckily it showed up the next day again, and the day after that...



Our little visitor reminded me of my favourite schoolbook as a child: “Tipiti le rouge-gorge”.

Just like an entire generation of French schoolchildren, I learned to read through the adventures of a little robin called Tipiti.

My sister and I found the book again on the internet a few years ago and bought it out of nostalgia. I also hoped to read it to my children one day, when their level of French would allow them to understand the story.



It is a gripping and very attaching tale, even sad at times, of the deep friendship between an older robin called Tipiti and his younger “little cousin”, nicknamed “Tipiti Junior”.



Each chapter is divided into two parts: one page of text and one page of homework assignments consisting of a list of new words to learn, a series of questions about the story, and short language exercises. My daughters Naomi and Sacha listen attentively as I read and enjoy answering the questions. They even fight to be chosen to speak first.

I remember that one of my wishes as a child was to see a robin in real life. But my family and I used to live in Japan back then, and European robins don’t exist in Asia. When we moved to France, we lived in a series of apartments and didn’t get a chance to see any robin from there either.



But now we have our own little Tipiti in our garden and after all these years my wish has finally come true.

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