Helen Harris’s experience (A moment that changed me: my husband died – and birds began behaving strangely towards me, 19 August) chimes with that of a friend of mine who had many close encounters with robins after the death of her father. She too had birds flying into her house as never before but, unlike Helen, she believed that this was the person’s spirit making contact.

My own association between birds and death is rather different. The day my mother-in-law died, a wren had flown into the window of the classroom where I taught, and I found it dead on the ground outside. When we took her ashes to be scattered in the sea, a pheasant hit the car windscreen and died.

Some years later, at school, a blackbird flew into a glass door and died. “I hope this doesn’t mean someone is about to die,” I said to another teacher, explaining why I thought it might. That evening, I discovered that a good friend had died at about the same time.

I can offer no explanation, but for me there does seem to be an association between birds and death. Visiting robins are more uplifting than birds sacrificing their own lives, though.
Angela Smith
Norwich