SYMBIOSIS is dead. So is Red Robbo. And my little haven of peace will never be quite so friendly again...

My apologies, kiddywinks, for using yet another long word. Symbiosis is what happens when two animals of different species live harmoniously together because they both get some benefit from the relationship.

You may have seen examples on it in television wildlife programmes: the tropical fish that live safe and sound within the stinging tentacles of sea anemones or the birds which live on the backs of hippopotami (when not submerged, that is).

I first mentioned symbiosis a year or so ago in praise of Red Robbo, who shared my allotment with me by the banks of Beggarsdale Beck. Robbo, you see, was a cock robin which followed my digging with great interest so he could seize any wireworm or leather jacket I happened to unearth. Robbo saved me a lot of bother and got a square meal in return.

In the end, after almost 18 months together, we got such big mates that he would try to settle on my wheelbarrow as I was pushing it along, sometimes even flying between my legs: I was terrified I might run him over.

So there I was, last weekend, filling in my kidney bean trench with compost and tossing him the odd snack, when it happened...

He was just biting into a juicy leather jacket (which, incidentally, do terrible damage to plant roots before metamorphosising into daddy-long-legs) when there was a hiss of wings, a flash of a big brown tail feathers, and off went Robbo clutched in the claws of a big adult male sparrow hawk.

I was stunned. I could clearly see Robbo clutched in the talons as the hawk flashed behind the old mountain ash in the hedgerow. Then he was gone - forever!

Mrs C, who was helping out with some planting, looked up and saw me standing silent as statue. She was as upset as me when I explained what had happened.

Now here was a strange reaction from a country couple. For months, we had been engulfed in horror scenes from the foot and mouth crisis. Even in normal times, we know that farm animals have to die.

We happily eat rabbit, thanks Ferocious Fred, Owd Tom's ferret, and if I take a trout from the beck, we eat that with extra relish: there is something deeply satisfying of eating something you have hunted yourself (get your pens out, PC brigade).

And here we were, stricken with grief, by the loss of a small bird of a non-endangered species, gone perhaps to feed the young of another species which most certainly is under threat.

We sat and ate our snap in silence. Then, on the edge of my bean trench, appeared another, younger, much thinner robin. Within a couple of minutes, he had snatched himself a small feast of nasties and already he seemed fatter.

Mother Nature, red in tooth and claw, still looking after her own.