120 Twelve Months With 



mimicry, he proceeded to make the "cracking, 

 splintering, spurting, semi-musical sounds" which 

 the blackbirds were emitting all about him, as 

 much as to say: "Those discordant notes are so 

 common and easy that any one can imitate them !" 



Robins, swallows, jays, swifts and sparrows also 

 gather in flocks in late summer or early autumn, 

 sometimes in large numbers. Mr. William Brew- 

 ster records that he has seen as many as 25,000 

 robins sleeping together in one roost. Often as 

 early as June, flocks of robins, consisting of the 

 young of the first brood and the adult males, 

 may be seen roosting together, the females being 

 occupied with the care of the second family. 



Mary Howitt, in "Birds in Summer," notices 

 this summer flocking habit of the birds: 



"They have left their nests on the forest bough; 

 Those homes of delight they need not now; 

 And the young and the old they wander out, 

 And traverse their green world round about; 

 And hark! at the top of this leafy haU, 

 How one to the other in love they call! 

 'Come up! Come up!' they seem to say, 

 Where the topmost twigs in the breezes sway." 



Like the hoarse call of the blackbird to which 

 Tennyson refers, most of the notes of our common 

 summer residents going about in flocks late in the 

 season are coarse and broken, with little of the 

 buoyant beauty and rollicking happiness of the 

 spring mating songs. Among the robins, for 



