AMERICAN ROBIN. 31 
past loudly snapping their beaks, that I had to jump down and run off at full speed. 
The Robins which nest farthest from man are, as a rule, the most pugnacious. It is 
remarkable but easy of explanation, that one may examine a Robin’s nest in a garden 
without the birds acting in the least angry or uneasy. They have doubtless been con- 
vinced by experience that no one intends to molest them. 
Besides the cry of alarm we frequently hear other characteristic notes during the 
breeding season. ‘Durick” and ‘Tuck-tuck-tuck”’ may often be heard. 
It is during this season that the Robin’s truly melodious and pleasing song is 
loudest. A harbinger, indeed, it is the first bird to carol from the tree tops the near 
arrival of the spring. The song, though simple and modest, is not without effect at 
such a time in the snow-covered, sadly silent landscape.—It fills desolate nature with 
indescribably joyous life and gives voice to man’s longing for the warm, soft, and mild 
breezes of spring and the odor of opening flowers. The Robin’s manner of singing is 
significant. While many of our birds choose a concealed bushy spot when they sing, 
and moreover accompany their song with lively movements, the Robin selects. an ex- 
posed spot, usually the top of a tree, and pours forth its song for hours from this lofty 
perch. It sits quietly, with its bill directed to the sky. It sings most earnestly and per- 
sistently early in the morning, as soon as the dawn appears in the east, and in the 
evening, often long after the fading of the bright sunset. I have heard a few sing during 
the hot hours of June and even of July, but this is a departure from the rule. There is 
great difference in singers: some sing with such excellence that they satisfy even the 
most fastidious hearer, others again are decidedly inferior. I have observed the finest 
songsters in the so-called ‘‘mixed woods’ of Wisconsin, where the music of the gurgling 
springs and gushing brooks, and the weirdly charming whisper in the pines accompanied 
their songs; the poorest singers I have found in the monotonous “black jack” regions 
of Missouri. Many students of bird-life, and even our great Audubon, compare the 
Robin's song to that of the European Blackbird!, and maintain that the song of both 
birds is very similar. Judging from my own experience, which is confined to caged Black- 
birds only, I would say that this is only conditionally true, viz.: so far as the voice, 
the note itself, is concerned. Both birds, which are very near relatives, have a powerful 
and ‘beautifully flute-like whistle, but the Blackbird’s song is more continuous, more 
modulated, the Robin's briefer, more monotonous. The Blackbird is one of. the very 
best and most superb of songsters, and the comparison of the two birds shows that 
our Robin is to be classed with the finest of singers.—What makes the song of the 
Robin especially valuable, is the fact that it is uttered in the immediate neighborhood 
of our rural and even city homes where every lover of nature can delight in it during 
the pleasant season of the year. The loud flutelike, highly melodious song poured forth 
in magnificent maestoso involuntarily reminds one of the clear, quietly flowing notes 
of a sacred song. Whenever the bird sits high aloft and sends its voiee to the distance, 
all the other male Robins of the neighborhood feel duty bound to enter into competition. 
Soon three, four, and even more, may be heard in loud chorus. This is usually the case 
during evening twilight, and then one may hear quite a number of birds all striving to 
outsing one another, while they make the surroundings echo with the powerful vibration 
x . 
1 Merula vulgaris. 
