124 THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 
WESTERN ROBIN 
Merula migratoria propingua (Ridway) 
Differing but slightly from the Eastern species, our Oregon Robin 
needs no description. In California they dwell in the mountains away 
from habitation, but here they are the birds of our lawns and gardens. 
Their nests, bulky affairs, plastered together with mud, are 
usually lined inside with fine grasses. 
It was the Robin that proved to me the seemingly obvious fact 
that birds learn how to build their particular kinds of nests by living 
in them while babies. Numbers of times 1 have given nest building 
material to Robins raised by hand in captivity and not one could build 
a nest, or even a makeshift nest until mated with one brought in from 
the wild state, when nest building would go on without a hitch. 
Usually there are four, sometimes five, greenish blue unspotted 
eggs. Incubation lasts about fourteen days, and the newly hatched 
young are naked, skinny, wriggling, pink little nestlings, and Mrs. 
Wheelock, in “Birds of California,” affirms that “they are fed by 
regurgitation for the first four days, the adults swallowing the food 
before giving it to the young. By the fifth day earthworms are given 
the nestlings after being broken into small pieces, and, as the days 
go by, these worms as well as large insects are given whole. The 
young Robins are voracious eaters, each one consuming, according to 
one authority, sixty-seven earthworms daily. Certain it is that they 
double in weight every twenty-four hours at first, and at the end of 
sixteen days are nearly as heavy as the adults. Usually the eighteenth 
day witnesses their first flight, but it is a long time after that before 
they learn to forage for themselves.” 
Until the first molt in the fall the plumage is spotted. It is at this 
period, when they are learning the ways of the world, that so many 
fall a prey to the house cat. This can be avoided by shutting pussy in 
beneath the porch through the day and keeping her in the house at 
night. Cats live very contentedly that way through the summer. 

