Monthly Bulletin 

 "ROBIN CARUSO." 



Dear Mr. Packard; 



Our home is in Ashmont, in the southerly part of Boston. In the 

 spring of 1916 the earliest robins came to us on the 29th day of March, and 

 their regular morning song began on the 31st day of the same month. In 

 April a male robin appeared with such a marked individuality of song and 

 manner that he aroused in us the liveliest interest and the highest admira- 

 tion. 



We were first attracted by his song. The voice was like that of a robin 

 only in some general characteristics of tone production. The selection of 

 forms and the delivery made truly an extraordinary performance. Indeed, 

 when we first heard this robin and before we had seen him, we thought he 

 might be a mocking bird, the same as we had previously known in Texas, 

 until he came and sang in a tree close by the house, where we positively 

 identified him. 



Even after we had discovered him to be a robin, the impression re- 

 mained with us that he had lived under the early influence of the mocking 

 bird. In time we thought he was telling us in his song the story that he 

 had been reared in 1914 from a nest in one of our own trees, and in the 

 autumn of that year had gone far south with the great flocks, whence from 

 some cause he did not return with the other robins in the spring of 1915, but 

 stayed in the land of the mocking bird, bereft of the society and the teach- 

 ing of his own kind, until meeting with the robins again in the second 

 autimin he followed them back in the i^priiig of 1916, to the place of his 

 nativity. 



We heard from this robin suggestions of the brown thrush's graceful 

 parts, the catbird's rapid figures, the bluebird's love call, the meadow lark's 

 plaintive note, the veery's distant flute and — if you dQ.;iiojL a^Te§dy,dp,]ui^,t,i?|)( 

 word — the whippoorwill's sharp injunction. .j it ^ , ., -- 



Mrs. McCulloch gave him the appropriate nariieTiobih Caruso, iri 

 recognition of his pre-eminence as a singer. He sang more continuously 

 than any other robin in our neighborhood. From dawn to dusk, in sunshine 

 or in rain, we were likely at any hour to hear this interesting and welcome 

 voice. Never could we mistake it for the voice of any other robin. Near or 

 far or in whatever direction, we could place him immediately wherever we 

 heard him. He sang on the treetops and on the housetops, as robins ordi- 

 narily do, and he sang standing on our lawn and on the stone curbing of tlie 

 street, where we had never before seen a robin do the like. 



In form and color this robin was not distinguishable from other male 

 robins. His mate also was true to her type. We could never identify either 

 one of the pair without first hearing his voice, and knowing through him the 

 consort if she happened to be present with him. 



Through the spring and until mid-summer we watched and loved Robin 

 Caruso as one of our own. In July we went to the country and did not re- 

 turn until September, when the singing time of the robins was over. In our 

 absence we had lost our robin, for without that voice he was incognito, 

 even though he was among the number of robins in our dooryard. We saw 



