Andrew Lack is mad about robins. Christmas cards, stamps, envelopes, china and cartoons, murders, fairy stories, myths, nursery rhymes, poems, epitaphs, novels - nothing is too esoteric or trivial to avoid his attention, except round robin letters, which have nothing to do with the bird. Now he has collected an anthology of 'Robinabilia', called Redbreast: The Robin in Life and Literature.

He said: "It's truly astounding. The more you look at literature, the more you see robins. Most bird literature is about song, so you get the skylark, nightingale, and to a lesser extent, the thrush. But that's all there is - just the song. The robin has a song all year, and so much else.

"There are old songs, like 'Who Killed Cock Robin', which merits a chapter on its own. Where does it come from and why does it persist?

"Then you have the Babes in the Wood. The one thing everybody knows about the Babes in the Wood is that the robin covered them with leaves, and so you get a tradition of robins burying the dead.

"Then there's the red breast - the fires of hell or a drop of Christ's blood from the Cross.

"And then it turns up in the early 18th-century, when we had an awful lot of very corrupt politicians. There seemed to be a fashion for calling corrupt politicians after birds, and anyone called Robert tended to be called Robin. Some of the poems are quite unpleasant.

"There was also a robin that came to Queen Mary's funeral in 1695 and sat on the coffin. She was very popular, and it was seen as an omen. Whether it was a good omen depended on whether you were a Catholic or not."

Andrew had a head-start at his task. The robin was one of the first birds to have its own biography, The Life of the Robin - written by Andrew's father, the ornithologist David Lack, in 1943. Andrew's mother, now 91 and still living in his childhood home in Boar's Hill, was also an ornithologist. But when he was eight, Andrew entered a school competition to collect flowers. His attention was diverted towards plants, and he is now an expert in plant pollination and genetics, though he remained a keen birdwatcher.

Now 54, he acknowledges that, subconsciously, he probably chose a field where he wasn't directly competing with his father, whose distinguished career culminated in the directorship of the Edward Grey Institute in Oxford. He died at the age of 62 in 1973.

For the past 20 years, Andrew has lectured at Oxford Brookes University, and has a reputation for itentifying any plant from a scrap of leaf, or a bird from the slightest call.

His anthology is a reworking of another book by his father, published in 1950, but now out of print. "I started researching the robin in literature because of my father's book, called Robin Redbreast. Unlike his biology book, which went to four editions, it was never a great success. The book's nearly 60 years old now, and I thought the subject deserved more than that. The whole thing snowballed.

"It became tremendous fun - it was so interesting."

Andrew's book was also sparked by his interest in literature. He took up poetry about 15 years ago - not just reading it, but writing his own verse. "After a while you think 'Maybe I'll try my hand'. Now whenever any of my colleagues leave, they tend to ask me to do a poem. I also do it at the end of my field trips, summarising all the amazing incidents. Otherwise they might sound personal, but if you put them into verse it sounds affectionate and comical."

It's a beautiful book, illustrated with historic plates, colour photos of robin tableaux, his father's Christmas card collection and his own stamp collection, plus cartoons by Euan Dunn, a former colleague of his father who now works for the RSPB. The foreword is by the naturalist Richard Mabey, an admirer of the poetry of John Clare, who has 17 entries in the book.

Andrew has added his own, biologist's, thoughts on some of the poetry and prose extracts, showing how they illustrate the robin's territorial instincts, for example. He quotes a scene from the film Gladiator, where the Roman general Maximus, played by Russell Crowe, is longing to go home but is contemplating yet another battle. A robin sits beside him, and watching it fly off, he resolves to fight. "It's reminded him that he can go home, but he will have to fight for his territory first."

He said: "Once I started delving into the Bodleian archives, I realised there was a treasure trove. Most of my father's quotations are still there, but reduced in length, and I have added as many as half again. I have done my own commentary, because styles have changed since 1950."

He believes his father would have been pleased with the finished product. "I always had a feeling that my father was looking over my shoulder and saying: 'You do it your way'. That was a nice feeling."

Robin Redbreast is published by SMH Books at £19.99.