WESTERN BIRDS Robin 



over the lawn, stopping abruptly and with head cocked 

 on one side to inspect a possible find, delving down and 

 bringing up a worm, is familiar to all dwellers east 

 of the Great Plains. 



They place their nests in trees, buildings, walls, al- 

 most any place will do, building large, bulky affairs of 

 twigs and leaves, rags and string, binding all together 

 with mud, which Madam pounds in with her feet as she 

 sits in the nest. The eggs are a beautiful green-blue 

 color, which is much used by mortals, being called 

 Robin's-egg-blue. The young birds have speckled breasts 

 and backs for the first weeks of their existence. 



It is the habit of the male birds and young to congre- 

 gate in trees for the night, the males returning in the 

 day-time to assist the female with her second brood. 

 Bradford Torrey, in "The Foot-path Way," gives a won- 

 derful account of a Robin roost which he watched in 

 Massachusetts, July, 1889. He found them going to an 

 isolated piece of swampy woods, a few acres in extent, 

 mostly a dense of gray birches and swamp white oaks, 

 but with a sprinkling of maples and other decidu- 

 ous trees. Quoting briefly from his account: "Thus 

 far I had always been too late to witness the beginning 

 of the flight. On the evening of August 1st I resolved 

 to be in season. I reached the border of the pond at 

 5:15, and at that very moment a single Robin flew into 

 the wood. No others were seen for eighteen minutes, 

 when three arrived together. From this time stragglers 

 continued to appear, and at 6:30 I had counted 176. 

 In the next ten minutes 180 arrived; in the next five 

 minutes, 138. Between 6:45 and 7, I counted 549; then 

 in six minutes, 217 appeared. At 7:25, when I con- 

 cluded, the figures stood at 1,533 birds. For about 

 twenty minutes, as will be noticed, the arrivals were at 

 the rate of thirty-six a minute. Throughout the thick- 

 est of the flight I could keep a lookout on only one side 



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