36 NATURE STUDY. 



took a great deal of interest in the strange inhabitant, especially 

 the purple grackles. As the white robin sat on a bough the grack- 

 les would perch near it, looking at it with their heads turned 

 shrewdly to one side, or hopping from place to place, as though to 

 get a better view. All the time they kept up a blackbird conversa- 

 tion about the object of their curiosity, clucking and chuckling 

 away at a great rate. 



The white robin did not hunt food for itself, although it was fully 

 old enough to do so, but depended on its parents. When it flew, it 

 did so awkwardly and blunderingly, and generally seemed to pre- 

 fer staying in one place. 



A day or two afterward two boys brought to my office the white 

 robin, dead. One of the local papers had said that an albino robin 

 might be sold to a museum, and I accused the boys of having kill- 

 ed the bird on the chance of selling it. This they stoutlj^ denied, 

 saying that they found it dead. I took off the skin for the purpose 

 of mounting it, and found that the boys had been telling the truth, 

 for there was no sign of an injury. The poor robin was very thin, 

 and its stomach was almost empty, excepting for the remains of 

 one bug. I wondered if its parents had grown tired of feeding it. 

 I found, also, that the reason it flew so poorly was because its eyes 

 were defective, and that it must have been almost blind. Had its 

 parents fed it until the time of the fall migration southward, the 

 white robin could not have gone with the rest, and mnst have starv- 

 ed. The robin was entirely white, with pink eyes, a pinky-white 

 beak and pinkish legs. 



Albinism, by the way, is caused by the lack of pigment, or color- 

 ing matter, in the quills. Birds so afflicted are, usually, not well 

 developed, and suffer from attacks of individuals of their own spe- 

 cies. 



The Robin as a Flycatcher. 



On June 26 one of the editors of Nature Study observed 

 a robin fly from its perch on a small tree, seize an insect 

 that was passing, swallow it and then return to its perch, 

 all as easily and naturally as the most accomplished fly- 

 catcher could do. This maj^ be a frequent thing, but it 

 was new to the observer, and so is here recorded. 



