154 ROBIN ROOSTS. 
to say anything new about so familiar a bird ; 
but the robin has one interesting and re- 
markable habit, to which there is no allusion 
in any of our systematic ornithological trea- 
tises, so far as | am aware, although many 
individual observers must have taken notice 
of it. I mean the habit of roosting at night 
in large flocks, while still on its breeding 
grounds, and long before the close of the 
breeding season.! 
Toward the end of summer, two years ago, 
I saw what looked like a daily passage back 
and forth of small companies of robins. A 
friend, living in another town, had noticed 
similar occurrences, and more than once we 
discussed the subject; agreeing that such 
movements were probably not connected in 
any way with the grand southward migration, 
1 Mr. William Brewster has been aware of this habit 
for twenty-five years, but, like myself, has never seen it 
mentioned in print. He devotes to it a paper in The Auk 
for October, 1890, to which I am happy to refer readers 
who may wish a more thorough discussion of the mat- 
ter than I have been able to give. My own paper was 
printed at the same time, in The Atlantic Monthly, and 
had been accepted by the editor before I knew of Mr. 
Brewster’s intention to write. References to a roost in 
Belmont, Mass., discovered by Mr. Brewster six years be- 
fore, are frequent in the following pages. 
