No other bird is quite so ever-present and familiar, so embedded in our culture, as the robin. With more than six million breeding pairs, the robin is second only to the wren as Britain’s most common bird. It seems to live its life alongside us, in every month and season of the year. But how much do we really know about this bird? Stephen Moss records a year of observing the robin both close to home and in the field to shed light on the hidden life of this apparently familiar bird.