116 THE ROBIN, OR REDBREAST. 



cornice, or on some curtain top, warbling their 

 song when the day is clear, or the fire burns 

 brightly, and in every way seeming at ease and 

 in confidence with the inmates. 



During the breeding season, they seem equally 

 to live either in company or retirement ; for while, 

 at this time, we shall find many in our woods and 

 plantations placing their nest under some broken 

 bank, or supported by some break or hole in the 

 trunk of a tree, rearing their young on the food 

 which nature has supplied, and singing the song 

 in complete seclusion ; we shall find as many 

 around our gardens and out-houses, gaining their 

 sustenance with the poultry, building their nest 

 in the very midst of bustle and labour, and hatch- 

 ing their family amidst all the motion and noise. 

 Garden houses and tool sheds, the green-house, 

 holes in the walls, and above all, the inside of 

 saw pits are in their turn chosen. We scarcely 

 recollect one of those old-fashioned sunk sawpits 

 built on the sides with dry stones, moss-grown 

 with time, and margined with a split log, that 

 did not possess its Robins, quietly sitting, while 

 the men wrought, often within the distance of a 

 yard. Sawmills, and the structures of the 

 modern time, are sadly deficient in convenience 

 for the inmates of the forest or grove. 



In its habits, the Robin is naturally solitary or 

 lives in pairs. It is arboreal, though at the same 

 time a great part of its food ' 3 taken on the ground, 

 &f*e grass or leaves being turned over by tke 

 <*ul. but the necessity for which is often pre- 



