Robin's alarm flashes red for danger across the green space

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire The season might just have tipped over the balance of the autumn equinox but the woods were still greenWhen I heard the robin’s call, I stopped on the path and peered into the woods. The call had all the qualities of alarm that we recognise: an annoying insistence, a way of filling space with inescapable sound, an instinctive understanding that something was wrong. Like heart-monitoring machines in A&E, a reversing vehicle or a broken-into car, it was a warning