16 JUNE 2007, Page 16

How to befriend robins

Sir: I was delighted to read Paul Johnson's warm reference to my father David Lack and his two robin books, the successful Life of the Robin, and the anthology, Robin Redbreast (And another thing, 26 May).

Incidentally, Lord Grey did not tame robins to ring them. His book The Charm of Birds (1927) devotes a chapter to teaching a wild robin to feed from the hand, just for the fun of it. My mother, now 90, and an ornithologist herself was given this book as a teenager and put the lesson into practice. It worked. She has had a tame robin in her garden most of her life.

Andrew Lack School of Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes