CHAPTER XVI. 



April 9 April 15. 



THE AMERICAN ROBIN. 



Order Passeres. Suborder Oscines. 



Family Turdidae Subfamily Turdinse. 



Genus Merula. Species Merula migratoria. 



Length 9.00 to 10.00; wing, 4.90 to 5.40; tail, 4.10 to 4.50. 

 Migration North, March; south, October. 



"I love to sit and listen 



In the dawning of the day, 

 To the robin sweetly singing, 



In the tree across the way. 



The American robin is a member of the subfamily tur- 

 dinse, composed of the thrushes. Like the English sparrow, it 

 is so common, both in the city and the country, that by sev- 

 eral authors it is made a standard of measurement. It would 

 seem therefore almost unnecessary to describe the bird, yet in 

 the schools I have found grown up children, who could not 

 tell me the color of its bill. Indeed the artist who made the 

 illustration for this chapter has failed to depict it correctly, 

 since he has made it brown with a slight tinge of yellow in- 

 stead of making it yellow with a slight tinge of brown. When 

 talking to a school about birds, one of the boys asked me how 

 the robin got its name, and all that I could tell him was that 

 it was so named because of its supposed resemblance to the 

 robin redbreast of Europe, with which our forefathers were 



