ROBIN ROOSTS. 155 
which, so far as we could judge, had not yet 
commenced, but that the birds must be fly- 
ing to and from some nightly resort. The 
flocks were small, however, and neither of 
us suspected the full significance of what we 
had seen. 
On the 19th of July, 1889, the same 
friend informed me that one of our Cam- 
bridge ornithologists had found a robin roost 
in that city, —a wood in which great num- 
bers of birds congregated every night. This 
led me to keep a sharper eye upon my own 
robins, whom I had already noticed repeat- 
ing their previous year’s manceuvres. Every 
evening, shortly before and after sunset, 
they were to be seen flying, now singly, now 
by twos and threes, or even by the half 
dozen, evidently on their way to some ren- 
dezvous. I was suspicious of a rather dis- 
tant hill -top covered with pine - trees; but 
before I could make it convenient to visit the 
place at the proper hour, I discovered, quite 
unexpectedly, that the roost was close by the 
very road up and down which I had been 
walking; an isolated piece of swampy wood, 
a few acres in extent, mostly a dense growth 
of gray birches and swamp white oaks, but 
