THE THRUSH FAMILY 7 
shoulders. He spends most of his time calling 
for food, for he is always hungry. He 1s rather 
clumsy in getting about, and often falls to the 
ground. But if you pick him up and put him 
on a low branch out of the reach of cats, he will 
fly as soon as your hand leaves him, and gener- 
ally come to the ground again. So it is of no 
use to try to help him that way. The only thing 
you can do is to keep cats and bad boys away 
from him, until he flies up into a tree. 
The robin gets his food on the ground, or 
just under the surface. He eats many caterpil- 
lars and grubs that are harmful to us. One that 
he specially likes is the cutworm, which has a 
bad way of biting off young plants. In the Kast 
he eats many earthworms, which we see him pull 
out of the ground on the lawn, but in the West, 
where there are not so many earthworms, he picks 
up insects of various kinds. 
All through spring, when insects are hard at 
work destroying our fruit and vegetables and 
young grains, the robin spends almost his whole 
time catching them; first for his own eating, but 
many more when his little ones get out of the 
shell, for young birds eat a great amount of food. 
Then, when he has spent months in our service 
killing inseets, so that our fruit and vegetables 
can grow, do you not think he has earned part 
of the cherries he has saved? 
