HOW THE ROBIN GETS HIS WORM. 251 



young, the bird showed an instinct for hunting worms, and 

 would alight on its master's table and pull over all the sheets 

 of paper, just as it would have searched beneath the dead 

 leaves in its home in the woods. 



What has most interested me in Robin's worm-hunting is the 

 way he gets his worms in early spring. When he first comes 

 in the spring to his far Northern home in Maine he arrives 

 long before the snow is gone. In ordinary years he reaches 

 here by the middle of March, when it is spring by the almanac. 

 At that season, even in the best of years, every fence carries a 

 great snow-drift along its northern side, which often does not 

 melt till the middle of April. Looking from my window to- 

 day, the thirteenth of April, 1898, I can see snow-drifts in 

 gardens where peas are already planted. When the robins 

 first come, one would expect to see them avoid this snow and 

 seek the open fields and gardens ; but I most frequently find 

 them, often in small flocks, hopping along the edges of the 

 drifts, eating food that they find there. In any field I would 

 expect to find most robins on the south side, which is of 

 course the one where the snow lies, as it is shaded by the 

 fence, or stone wall, or row of trees that bounds the field and 

 shuts off the southern sun. Whatever you may think, the 

 northern side of a field will dry sooner than the southern side, 

 the northern sidewalk will dry sooner than the southern one, 

 if the field have a fence and the sidewalk have houses on 

 the southern edge. 



To settle why the robins followed the drifts was a matter, 

 that required some thinking. What was the advantage to 

 them? 



I have just been out and examined the drifts I spoke 

 of, to be sure that no one. can think me mistaken in assign- 

 ing a reason. These drifts are made up of granulated icy 



