'^"sj^] llo^^. Breeding Habits of the Robin. 1 63 



to be fed, but I have every reason to believe that it was the 

 parent birds that returned each year and not a pair of -which 

 either the male or female were one of the young of the previous 

 year. (See Auk, Vol. II, p. 304.) Thus I feel confident that a 

 pair of Robins once mated remain so for a number of years until 

 separated by injury or death. I can well imagine it to be within 

 the range of possibility, that a pair of birds leaving their summer 

 home could keep together, joining some flock made up of other 

 pairs, and migrate and winter in company ; in fact, I think for a 

 pair to separate, whose love for each other is as strong as we 

 know it to be, and to wander apart never to meet again, seems 

 harder to believe than disbelieve. 



The arrival of the males before the females can be explained 

 by the male birds of the winter flock starting in advance of their 

 less hardy mates (for winter records in the north of various 

 species are almost always of male birds), to be followed by the 

 females a week or so later when the weather is less severe ; and it 

 is probable that the more pronounced Robin courtships we see 

 going on about us in the spring are the birds who lost their mates 

 during the previous winter, remating, and the young of the year 

 being wooed for the first time. 



The Choosing of the Nest Site. 



In my careful observing of Robins at the breeding season . 

 I have only once seen a pair choose a nest site. I chanced to be 

 looking at a female Robin one day (1897) sitting in a crotch of 

 a wild cherry tree when she flew to the ground and began chasing 

 about a male, evidently her mate. In a minute they both flew to 

 the crotch that she had just left and stood peering about; the 

 male flew to the ground again in a few seconds and the female 

 also flew, returning in a minute with the first few twigs that were 

 to form the foundation of the nest. I believe the female chooses 

 the site, as it is she who does the greater part of the building. 



The Nest Site. 



The Robin's nest is too common an object to every observer of 

 bird life to waste space in describing its various situations. Suf- 



