Our little brown 'robin'.

We've had a night time visitor recently,  a nice  little bird that arrives at sunset and stays till the morning.  When we first noticed it,  it was sitting on the edge of one of the lampshades on the terrace,  it would fly to the next light,  out onto the grape vines then back again.   Quite a small bird,  and very round.  Tennis ball shaped.  With a long pointy beak.  Brown all over its back with a paler front and with a slightly darker tail.   It hops and bobs along the shelf,   and seems quite happy to be near us.   We took a couple of photos but without using the flash it was  too dark,  and  using the flash makes it fly away briefly.

So onto google to look for  'a small brown robin shaped bird'  because that is exactly what it looks like.  We call it our brown robin  even though we know it can't be a robin - we have a robin in the garden as well and they are very territorial.  First we looked in our bird book then  around various online bird-watching websites,  some with photos,  some with video and bird song too,  and after more pictures taken by John with a bigger and better camera than mine,  we think it is a dunnock.  Never heard of it before,  and to be honest to begin with we weren't totally certain.  Every picture or drawing shows a bird with fairly speckled/mottled colour wings and it was difficult to see our birds' wings because at night it sits all fluffed up.


The first picture is mine and then John  managed to catch it flying out of the light and has made a montage of his pictures.....

This morning it stayed around longer,  normally we don't notice it during the day,  but it's been hopping around the flower beds this morning and under the table out in the garden.  It looks as if it's pecking at the fallen olives.