32 AMERICAN ROBIN. 
of their jubilant, exultant melody. What is a northern garden without its joyful song- 
sters, the Robins? Who can fail to love them? Even the farmer, if he does not lack 
all sense of beauty in nature, is delighted to see a pair of these fine, lively birds, so 
versed in melody, take up their home in his garden, for they belong to the first of living 
beings to hail him with the greeting of morning when he enters the open air at early 
dawn. 
But the Robin is also a very useful bird. Its food consists during the greater part 
of the year of inse¢ts which are usually captured on the ground. It consumes incalcu- 
lable numbers of the very destructive cut-worms, eanker-worms, beetles and their larvae, 
grasshoppers, borers, snails, caterpillars, and many others. This usefulness increases as 
the young are hatched. Then the parents destroy an immense number of insects, con- 
fining their attention almost entirely to those species that do great damage to vege- 
tation, destroying in every conceivable manner fruit trees and ornamental plants as 
well as vegetables, and working mischief which man is generally helpless to remedy. 
This is likewise true of all our other small garden birds, such as the Catbirds, Thrashers, 
Mockingbirds, Bluebirds, Vireos, Titmice, Warblers, Orioles, Kingbirds, and others. If 
the Robin does take a few ripe cherries and other small fruits, it is no more than just 
that it should receive this reward for its usefulness. The few berries, grapes, &c., con- 
sumed by this bird are not to be compared with the great number of insects it destroys. 
As it does not occur in flocks, except during migration and in winter, it is evident that 
it can do but very little harm. 
“The Robin,” says Dr. Elliott Coues,* “is a great eater of berries and soft fruits 
of every description; and these furnish, during the colder portion of the year, its chief 
sustenance. Some of the cultivated fruits of the orchard and garden are specially 
attractive, and no doubt the birds demand their tithe. But the damage done in this 
way is trifling at most, and wholly inconsiderable in comparison with the great benefit 
resulting from the destruction of noxious inse¢ts by this bird. The prejudice which some 
persons entertain against the Robin is unreasonable; the wholesale slaughter of the 
birds which annually takes place in many localities is as senseless as it is cruel. Few 
persons have any adequate idea of the enormous—the literally incalculable numbers of 
insects that Robins eat every year. It has been found, by careful and accurate observa- 
tions, that a young Robin, in the nest, requires a daily supply of animal food equivalent 
to considerably more than its own weight! When we remember that some millions of 
pairs of Robins raise five or six young ones, once, twice, or even three times a year, it 
will be seen that the resulting destruction of insects is, as I have said, simply incalculable. 
I-have no doubt that the services of these birds, during the time they are engaged in 
rearing their young alone, would entitle them to proteGtion, were the parents them- 
selves to feed exclusively upon garden-fruits for the whole period. But at this time the 
diet of the old birds is very largely of an animal nature; nor is this the only season 
during which the destruction of insects goes on. Upon the first arrival of the main 
body of the birds early in the spring, long before any fruits are ripe, they throw them- 
selves into newly-plowed fields, and scatter over meadows, lawns, and parks, in eager 
search for the worms and grubs that, later in the season, would prove invincible to 
“ Dr, E. Cones, “Birds of the Colorado Valley.” 1878, p. 12,13 
