A Dish of Robins 97 



a day, may thank your lucky stars that kind 

 Mother Nature did not crucify you with a sense 

 of hearing exaggerated into an acuteness that en- 

 ables him to locate the movement of a worm under 

 ground two yards away. It seems unconditional 

 surrender upon the part of the worm when Mr. 

 Robin comes calling, but he gives up the ghost 

 to the fisherman only after a struggle, and what 

 is worse, often in a niggardly half-a-loaf fashion. 

 W. H. Hudson, the famous English naturalist, 

 has a book whose title is "Birds and Man," as 

 though they were inseparable, but as a matter of 

 fact there is only one bird inseparably associated 

 with man, and that is the Robin. He can't get 

 too close, and if given the slightest chance does 

 courting, builds his nest, and rears his family by 

 preference under the veranda where human crea- 

 tures pass at all hours of the day, and cats prowl 

 at all hours of the night. In Mr. Hudson's book, 

 to which I have just referred, he tells the story 

 of an Owl, reared in captivity and without fear of 

 man. So confiding was it, that coming, like all 

 Owls on noiseless wing, it would light on the 

 shoulder of any human creature who might hap- 

 pen along in the night. Some one, supposing 

 himself attacked, struck it to the ground and 

 broke its wing with a club. It survived its injury, 

 but its confidence in man was at an end and it 

 grew wilder and wilder until it finally returned to 



