216 



CHARACTER OF THE REDBREAST. 



covered, to save it from destruction ; if unprotected, it was certain to be eaten. I have knowTi 

 tliem to visit laborers at breakfast-time to eat butter from tlieir liands, and enter a lantern to 

 feast on the candle. One, as I have been assured, is in the constant habit of entering a house 

 in a tan-yard, by the window, that it might feed upon tallow, when the men were using this 

 substance in the preparation of hides. But even further than this, I have seen the Redbreast 

 exhibit its partiality for scraps of fat, etc. Being present one day in December, 1837, when a 

 golden eagle was fed, a Robin, to my surprise, took the eagle's place on the perch the moment 

 that he descended to the ground to eat some food given him, and when there, picked off some 

 iittle fragments of fat or scraps of liesh ; this done, it quite unconcernedly alighted on the , 

 chain on which the ' rapacious ' bird was fastened. 



"I at the same time learned that this Robin regularly visited the eagle's abode at feeding- 

 time, though as yet there was no severity of weather. Although the Robin escaped the golden 

 eagle unscathed, as much cannot be said for one which occasionally entered the Idtchen at the 



EEDBKEAST AND REDSTART.— ©-y^Aacw rubeciila aud Euticitla phmnicurm. 



Falls, and sang there ; having one day alighted on a cage in which a toucan was kept, this 

 bird with its huge bill seized and devoured it." Another Robin, mentioned by the same 

 author, was in the habit of attending on a carpenter, stealing tlie shavings as materials for his 

 nest, and making very free with his grease-pot, peclving from it while in his hand. 



The Robin is also remarkably fond of bread and butter on which lioney or sugar has been 

 spread, and wlU eat of this dainty until it is hardly able to fly. One of these birds who had 

 been treated to such a repast, was so pleased with it that he returned, bringing with him three 

 companions, who gorged themselves to such a degree, that they were taken up by hand, and 

 put away for the night into a comfortable recess. After a while, between twenty and thirty 

 Robins came to the house in hopes of obtaining the sweet food. Perhaps they may be instinct- 

 ively led to sugar and fatty sul:)stances, as a means of preserving themselves against the effects 

 of cold. Cream is in great favor with the birds during the winter months, and they have been 

 seen to enter an outhouse which was employed for washing i^ui-jtoses, and to eat the soap. 



The Redlu'east is a most combative bird, fighting its own species with singular energy, 

 and often killing its opponent. One of these birds killed upwards of twenty of its own kind. 



