/ The Robin. 411 



say more so ; for, when sunshine and love call him to the 

 grove, we see him all animation and song, his scarlet stomacher 

 more bright, and his form more graceful ; busily preparing 

 for the great work of increasing his kind. In the winter, I 

 conceive his habits to be unnatural, if I may be allowed the 

 expression : we then see him a bird of sorrow, obliged, from 

 scarcity of food, to leave his sylvan recesses and frequent the 

 haunts of man. Brooding on a solitary post in the snow, he 

 looks unhappy, and his slender pipe and chirp seem the wail- 

 ing of his starved, forlorn, and half-domesticated state. 



In the spring-time he is a constant companion of the gar- 

 dener, and seldom have I witnessed him with more delight 

 than when engaged in this healthy and rational recreation. 

 Perched on the bough of a neighbouring apple tree, his pro- 

 minent black eye keenly bent on the earth as it is turned up 

 with the spade, and his head twisted aside, he watches the 

 writhings of some poor worm or insect larva disturbed from its 

 place of repose ; briskly poimcing on it, he regains another 

 situation, to wait and anticipate a fresh supply. 



When the brood of the robin first leaves the nest, the 

 young ornithologist will be very apt, from their mottled breasts 

 and great difference of plumage from the old ones, to imagine 

 them another species of bird ; particularly the young of the 

 redstart (ikfotacilla Phoenicurus), but from which they may 

 be readily distinguished by the peculiar horizontal movement 

 in the tail of the latter. This difference of plumage, by the 

 by, in old and young birds of the same species, has often 

 lyisled even the experienced naturalist, and has rendered 

 rather incorrect some of the genera of our British birds. The 

 young of the robin, too, are perhaps the silliest and most 

 stupid of all young birds ; easily falling a prey to the cat, 

 weasel, &c. ; and though numbers are produced at every 

 incubation, of which there are sometimes two, or even more, 

 during the breeding season, they are comparatively scarce, 

 from the above cause. 



Few observers of nature, I suppose, can have passed un- 

 heeded the sweetness and peculiarity of the song of the robin, 

 and its various indications with regard to atmospheric changes : 

 the mellow liquid notes of spring and summer, the melan- 

 choly sweet pipings of autumn, and the jerking chirps of 

 winter. In spring, when about to change his winter song for 

 the vernal, he for a short time warbles in so unusual a strain 

 as at first to startle and puzzle even those ears most expe- 

 rienced in the notes of birds. He may be considered as part 

 of the naturalist's barometer. On a summer evening, though 



