The Redbreast. 53 



In the winter if you care to try the experiment of putting out a trap baited 

 with a lively mealworm, you may catch Robin after Robin without difficulty; but, 

 in the spring, should you have a nest in your garden, you will see one pair only; 

 should a stranger appear, he is chased and attacked immediately ; woe be to him 

 if he be the weaker bird, for even his death will not appease the rage of his 

 opponent ; mutilation alone being satisfactory to his vengeful eye. 



The only time at which we miss the Redbreast about our homes is during 

 the moulting season ; for then it retires to the seclusion of the woods and coverts 

 of the country to change its clothing ; but no sooner has it donned its bright 

 winter dress than it is with us again. At this season when we gladly welcome 

 the reappearance of our trustful little friend, and delight, when gardening, to 

 watch it impudentl}' hopping about within a foot of our spade, or even for the 

 nonce alighting on it to peep into the earth we have just turned over.* The Latin 

 races are capturing this charming bird in m3'riads and slaughtering them for food. 



Excepting when on migration the Robin rarel}^ flies high or for great 

 distances. The flight itself is widel}- undulatory ; the moment it alights and 

 every half minute or so subsequently if it should have settled on a branch, it 

 goes through a spasmodic little stooping action accompanied by a lowering of 

 the head, flip of the wings and an upward jerk of the tail : on the earth it 

 proceeds by long hops, with a pause and the characteristic epileptic stoop after 

 every few hops. 



The building site of this bird varies almost endlessly, fany hollow into which 

 it can stuff its nest seems to be welcome ; if built near the habitation of man, it 

 may be placed in a corner of an outhouse, or a ledge in a dust-bin, in a 

 watering-pot hanging on a nail, a quart pot hanging on a fence, a flower pot in 

 a shed, in iv}^ on the house wall, in creepers on a fence, in the side of a bean- 

 stack or pile of brush-wood : in all which situations I have found it ; in the 

 countr}' an old teapot flung into a plantation may be chosen, or a slight 

 depression in the ground below a tree or iv3^-covered stump, a cranny in a rock 

 or a deserted chalk or sand-pit, or a hole in a grassy bank : but the Robin's 

 favourite nesting-site is at the side of a wide public road bounded on either hand 

 by a wood, from which a sloping irregular bank partly covered with ivy and 

 bramble descends to the thoroughfare : during the frosts of winter or during 



* When diggiug one day in nij- garden a Robin hopped between my feet alighting on the top of my 

 spade, from which, a moment before, I had removed my foot, and there it sat peeping into the hole and then 

 glancing sideways up in my face as if asking me to continue to turn over the earth ; a feat which I could 

 uot accomplish without disturbing the bird. 



t Mr. Frohawk writes that a pair of Robins built on the bend of a gutter pipe to his house in 1894 and 

 1895. at a height of 20 feet from the ground: the pipe was slight!}' concealed by a few entangled sprays of 

 Ainpelopsis yeikhii : the situation was identical each year. 



