40 BIRD NOTES 



ness or fear of the depth below that made a robin 

 hang back in my hand one day when I had caught 

 it while beating itself against the window of a 

 room on the third story, and was putting it out 

 of the same ? Robins are hardly birds of the air, 

 and though they like the top of a wall, or the 

 peak of a low gable, they are seldom seen on high 

 trees ; and this robin may have felt dazed and 

 awed for a moment by the height from, which it 

 had to descend. When it did so its swift oblique 

 flight was little short of a fall with a parachute. 



January 4, 1882. 



What a jealous bird the robin is ! or is it from 

 pride that it scarcely ever comes to the window 

 to feed with the other birds ? It comes indeed in 

 very cold and frosty weather-; but it seems, even 

 then, to do it under protest ; there is a flash of 

 the bright eye and an indignant pose and turn of 

 the head which are very amusing, and express 

 very plainly that the other birds are far beneath 

 him and that no one has any right there but him- 

 self ; all of which is sometimes even more plainly 

 expressed by a stab with the beak. I have seen a 

 robin lower his lance, as it were, to run at a nut- 

 hatch, and even at a blackbird. The nuthatch is 

 feared by all more than any other bird ; I have 

 seen a chaffinch defy one, but then the nuthatch 



