THE REDBREAST 431 



own species are excluded. Pressure of cold weather may sometimes 

 force him to associate with his fellows in order to share the crumbs 

 put out by the charitable, but he can hardly be said to suffer them 

 gladly. He is happy only when alone. Hence the old saying, that 

 one bush will not harbour two robins Unum arbustum non alit duos 

 erithacos. 



It occurred to me one autumn that it ought to be possible 

 to make a map of a given number of adjoining robin estates. The 

 work was by no means as easy as it might at first sight appear, the 

 chief difficulty being to avoid confusing the identity of neighbouring 

 robins, and this could only be satisfactorily done by having two 

 or three under view at the same time. My inquiry began in 

 August, but it was not till November that I was sure of my facts. 

 These I embodied in the accompanying plan (p. 432), which was 

 made at a farm near Chesham, to which I paid visits every month 

 from August to March during 1903-4. 



On examining this plan, it will be noted that the boundaries 

 between the feeding areas are nearly everywhere imaginary lines, 

 and that they overlap. Each robin clearly recognised to within 

 a yard or two the position of his boundary, and made the fact 

 quite clear to any other robin who did not. Each had, indeed, 

 a firm belief in the sacred rights of property his rights, not the 

 other fellow's and enforced the same with the utmost vigour. 

 Each was a landed proprietor, gamekeeper and magistrate rolled 

 into one when he was not himself playing the poacher ; and his 

 breast served as a flaming trespass-board visible from afar when 

 it did not betray its owner in some flagrant act of trespass. 



So habituated were these robins to living each within his own 

 estate that it was not easy to drive them out. When disturbed from 

 one perch, they moved to another, and so on back again to the first. 

 One day (November 22) I "moved on" the Field Robin from point to 

 point twelve times round his property, and only twice did he quit it, 

 though evidently considerably alarmed by my unusual behaviour. 



