94 BIRDS OF THE WEST 



ROBIN REDBREAST. 



Of course you know the robin redbreast, who isn't a robin at 

 all but only a thrush — Only a thrush ? Well, it is quite an honor 

 to belong to that cultured family. They are vocalists of the 

 highest order. The brown thrasher, the wood thrush, the her- 

 mit thrush are all country cousins of the redbreast, and what a 

 quartette of singers they are. 



When our ancestors, the Pilgrim Fathers, those famous three 

 brothers, stepped from the Mayflower, the first bird they saw they 

 called the robin. He was the bird that covered the "Babes in the 

 Woods" with leaves, you know, and the name has clung to him 

 ever since. Well, that was probably the limit of the Pilgrim 

 Fathers as to bird lore. 



How he can sing ! What a nicely trained voice he has ! 

 Modulation, accentuation, pitch, crescendo, diminuendo, everything 

 that Caruso knows, he knows, and when he comes north in 

 early spring time, the world takes his word for it — that spring has 

 come. Somehow we give the little fellow credit for knowing more 

 about the weather than the weather bureau knows. Did you ever 

 notice his white eyelids? Can you tell him from his wife, with 

 his darker head and brighter breast ? Did you ever hear him sound 

 his note of alarm when you have come upon him suddenly while 

 he is courting his ladylove? And how he pulls upon that worm! 

 He throws out his chest like a Dutchman at a saengerfest and 

 swallows it as though it were a sausage. And what an appetite ! 

 Why if you could eat as much between sunrise and sunset as a baby 

 robin, it would take 280 pounds of steak to feed you, and about all 

 the baby robin gets is earthworms from the lawn. You say the rob- 

 ins steal cherries? Maybe. Tou and I have done that. We knew 

 better but the robins don't. Maybe the very seed from which the 

 cherry tree grew was dropped by a robin. He is entitled to a few 

 of the cherries and he very kindly takes them from the top of the 

 tree where you couldn't get them anyway. If he should fly into 

 your pantry and open a can of preserves he ought not to be 

 censured. 



Last October I saw three varieties of thrushes, the brown 

 thrasher, Wilson's thrush and the redbreast all pulling worms 

 from the lawn of a friend of mine who thinks I am having a 

 brain-storm because I am writing these articles. How often you 



