— 
A BIRD-LOVER’S APRIL. 229 
new species arrived at my station for the entire 
fortnight. 
Robins sang sparingly from the beginning, 
and became perceptibly more musical on the 
8th, with signs of mating and jealousy; but 
the real robin carnival did not open till the 
morning of the 14th. Then the change was 
wonderful. Some of the birds were flying this 
way and that, high in air, two or three to- 
gether; others chased each other about nearer 
the ground; some were screaming, some hiss- 
ing, and more singing. So sudden was the out- 
break and so great the commotion that I was 
persuaded there must have been an arrival of 
females in the night. 
I have heard it objected against these 
thrushes, whose extreme commonness renders 
them less highly esteemed than they would 
otherwise be, that they find their voices too 
early in the morning. But I am not myself 
prepared to second the criticism. They are 
not often at their matins, I think, until the 
eastern sky begins to flush, and it is not quite 
certain to my mind that they are wrong in as- 
suming that daylight makes daytime. I have 
questioned before now whether our own custom 
of sitting up for five or six hours after sunset, 
and then lying abed two or three hours after 
sunrise, may not have come down to us from 
