THE ROBIN. 161 



" The food of the Robin," the Professor says, " while with us, 

 consists principally of worms, various insects, their larvae and eggs, 

 and a few cherries. Of worms and cherries they can procure but 

 few, and those during but a short period ; and they are obliged, 

 therefore, to subsist principally upon the great destroyers of leaves, 

 canker-worms, and some other kinds of caterpillars and bugs. If 

 each robin, old and young, requires for its support an amount of 

 these equal to the weight consumed by this bird, it is easy to see 

 what a prodigious havoc a few hundred of these must make upon 

 the insects of an orchard or nursery." 



Wilson Flagg, an acute and careful observer of the habits 

 of our birds, gives some of his experiences of the Robin, 

 as follows. He says, 



" Before I had investigated the habits of this bird, with particular 

 reference to the service he renders to agriculture, I supposed he 

 was only of secondary importance, compared with the Blackbird 

 and others that possess the faculty of discovering and seizing the 

 grubs that lie concealed beneath the surface of the ground. Though 

 the Robin does not possess this faculty, he is pre-eminently service- 

 able in other ways ; and the more I have studied his habits, the 

 more I am convinced of his usefulness. Indeed, I am now fully 

 persuaded that he is valuable beyond all other species of birds, and 

 that his services are absolutely indispensable to the farmers of New 

 England. Some persons believe that the Robin is exclusively a 

 frugivorous bird, and that for fruit he will reject all other food that 

 is within his reach. Others believe that his diet consists about 

 equally of fruits and angle-worms, but that he is not a general con- 

 sumer of insects. The truth is, the Robin is almost exclusively 

 insectivorous, and uses fruit, as we do, only as a dessert, and not 

 for his subsistence, except in the winter, when his insect food cannot 

 be obtained. He is not omnivorous, like the Crow, the Jay, and the 

 Blackbird. He rejects farinaceous food unless it is artificially pre- 

 pared, derives almost his entire support from insects and grubs, and 

 consumes, probably, a greater variety of species than any other 

 bird. I am entirely at a loss to account for this very prevalent and 

 mistaken notion respecting the frugivorous habits of the Robin. 



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