10 Bird-Life in Labrador. 



of mv youthful ambition, and, having shown the public one of 

 them, in " Xew England Bird Lite/' will now try to give a 

 very imperfect and inadequate conception of the other in this 

 little sketch of Labrador bird life. In my boyhood, the robin 

 was always, or nearly always, the first bird to greet me in the 

 Spring and the last, saving a few chickadees, woodpeckers, 

 nuthatches and the like, our regular Winter birds, to leave 

 in the Fall. I have found him in nearly every corner wherein 

 I have hunted; and often, when least expecting it, has his fa- 

 miliar form and note come to me like a message from home. 

 The first bird then, of which I have to speak, is the robin ; 

 nearly of equal abundance throughout the extent of North 

 America, from Labrador to Alaska. 



The first time that I saw the robin in J^abrador I was climb- 

 ing the high hills in the rear of our log cabin, one day in the 

 Fall of 1881. There was almost nothing astir that day. I had 

 searched the lowlands without success ; and the derisive titter 

 of the chickadee, as he would suddenly appear a few feet from 

 me and as suddenly disappear, after his merry laugh, in the 

 spruces that spread their dense, matted masses everywhere 

 around, and the mocking, fiendish croak of the ravens, perch- 

 ed here or there upon some inaccessible crag, had driven me 

 to distraction. On, on I climbed. I left the spruces and en- 

 tered the birches. As I did so, a short, quick cry of alarm, 

 a glimpse of several plump bodies rushing through the tan- 

 gled leaves, and, before I could head them off, a flock of rob- 

 ins gathered themselves just beyond the tree tops, and the next 

 moment I saw their retreating forms way up the peak above 

 me, clearing its northern side and disappearing behind the 

 crest. Thus I first saw the robin in Labrador. I followed 

 them that day for hours. They always eluded me, and were 

 as wild as hawks. Over hill and vale the relentless pursner 

 followed until the shades of evening baffled all efforts, and 

 warned me of the usclessness of any further attempts fur that 

 day. I have followed robins many times since that attempt, 

 have found them on hills and home pastures, wild and tame, 



