TTie Robin Redbreast. 43 



tail. The forehead, cheeks, and breast are orange red, and 

 the upper part of the body, and the tail and wings are dingy- 

 olive green. 



The female is smaller, has less of the orange colour on her 

 forehead, and has a paler breast : her legs are a purplish 

 brown, while those of her mate are darker in colour. "Unless 

 when very old she also lacks the yellow spot on the wing 

 coverts, which is so conspicuous in the male. 



The young, when first hatched, are covered with yellow 

 down, then they become grey, and their breast feathers are 

 fringed with dusky yellow, which gives them a mottled ap- 

 pearance, as unlike that of their parents as possible ; nor do 

 they assume the adult plumage until the second moult. 



Charmingly familiar in winter, the Eobin is excessively 

 shy in summer, when the male retires with his partner to 

 the most solitary and out-of-the-way place he can find, to 

 rear his little family. The nest, inartistically built of leaves 

 and moss, lined with hair and a few small feathers, is va- 

 riously placed; sometimes on the ground amongst brambles, 

 against the trunk of a tree, in a hole in a wall, or some 

 natural crevice in a rock, and occasionally in the most unlikely 

 places, such as an old watering-can, or a flower-pot on a shelf 

 in a garden outhouse, or the thatch of a barn or cottage : and 

 one instance has come under my observation of a pair of these 

 birds having made their nest on the curtain-pole, among the 

 curtains in a lady's bedroom, the window of which was con- 

 siderately left partly open night and day, to enable them to 

 cater for the young brood, which they successfully reared ia 

 this novel situation. The old birds never seemed to take the 

 least notice of the inmates of the house, or of the visitors 

 who were introduced for the purpose of seeing the strange 

 sight, but would fearlessly alight on the table or the floor to 

 pick up such crumbs and other food as were placed there on 

 purpose for them, and with which they fed the nestlings as 

 freely as if no eyes but their own beheld them. 



