AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 83 



Of tlie thrushes, the robin was by far the 

 most mnnerous, noisy, and generally distributed. 

 He was not, however, a bird of the lawn, the 

 orchard, and the shade tree by the house door, 

 but by preference a dweller in larch swamps 

 and spruce thickets, secluded river beds and up- 

 land forests. He was the first bird in every 

 lonely grove or deep wood vista to give a note 

 of alarm and warning to the neighborhood ; and 

 the first to respond to a cry of fear or pain 

 uttered by any other bird. The hermit thrush 

 was present in fair numbers, and blessed the 

 woods and pastures with his anthem. I saw 

 Swainson's and gray-cheeked thrushes, but the 

 catbird and thrasher were apparently unknown, 

 as was also the veery. The robin's conduct 

 made me feel as though he were not one and the 

 same with the common New England dooryard 

 birds, but of a race as different from theirs as the 

 Cape Breton Highlander's stock is from that of 

 the matter-of-fact Scotch mechanic of the cities. 

 The people round Loch Ainslie and between 

 Cape Smoky and St. Anne's Bay speak and think 

 Gaelic ; and the robins in the Baddeck and Mar- 

 garee woods speak and think a language of the 

 forest and the glen, not of the lawn. 



One evening, as I lay on the sandy shore of 

 Loch Ainslie, close to the mouth of Trout Brook, 

 the spotted sandpipers of the lake told me a se- 



