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Rohin Roosts. 



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[October, 



ROBIN EOOSTS. 



Of all the nearly eight hundred spe- 

 cies of Nortli American birds, the robin 

 is without question the one most gener- 

 ally known. Its great commonness and 

 wide distribution have something to do 

 with this fact, but can hardly be said 

 to account for it altogether. The red- 

 eyed vireo has almost as extensive a 

 range, and at least in New England is 

 possibly more numerous ; hut except 

 among ornithologists it remains a stran- 

 ger, even to country-bred people. Not 

 long ago a man, whose writings show 

 him to be an exceptionally intelligent 

 lover of things out-of-doors, wrote to me 

 that to the best of his knowledge he had 

 never seen a vireo of any kind. The 

 robin owes its universal recognition part- 

 ly to its size and perfectly distinctive 

 dress, partly to its early arrival in the 

 spring, but especially (;o the nature of 

 its nesting and feeding habits, which 

 bring it constantly under every one's eye. 



It would seem impossible, at this late 

 day, to say anything new about so famil- 

 iar a bird ; but the robin has one inter- 

 esting and remarkable habit, to which 

 there is no allusion in any of our sys- 

 tematic ornithological treatises, so far as 

 I am aware, although many individual 

 observers must have taken notice of it. 

 I mean the habit of roosting at night in 

 large flocks, while still on its breeding 

 grounds, and long before the close of 

 the breeding season.^ 



Toward the end of summer, two years 

 ago, I saw what looked like a daily pas- 

 sage back and forth of small companies 

 of robins. A friend, living in another 

 town, had noticed similar occurrences, 



and more than once we discussed the 

 subject; agreeing that such movements 

 were probably not connected in any way 

 with the grand southward migration, 

 which, so far as we could judge, had 

 not yet commenced, but that birds must 

 be flying to and from some nightly re- 

 sort. The flocks were small, however, 

 and neither of us suspected the full sig- 

 nificance of what we had seen. 



On the 19th of July, 1889, the same 

 friend informed me that one of our 

 Cambridge ornithologists had found a 

 robin roost in that city, ■ — a wood in 

 which great numbers of birds congre- 

 gated every night. This led me to keep 

 a sharper eye upon my own robins, 

 whom I had already noticed repeating 

 their previous year's actions. Every 

 evening, shortly hefore and after sun- 

 set, they were to be seen flying, now 

 singly, now by twos and threes, or 

 even by the half dozen, evidently on 

 their way to some rendezvous. I was 

 suspicious of a rather distant hilltop 

 covered with pine-trees ; but before I 

 could make it convenient to visit the 

 place at the proper hour, I discovered, 

 quite unexpectedly, that the roost was 

 close by the very road up and down 

 which I had been walking : an isolated 

 piece of swampy wood, a few acres in 

 extent, mostly a dense growth of gi'ay 

 birches and swamp white oaks, hut with 

 a sprinkling of maples and other decid- 

 uous trees. It is bounded on the further 

 side by a wet meadow ; at the eastern 

 end by a little ice-pond, with a dwelling- 

 house and other buildings beside it, all 

 within a stone's throw of the wood. 



* Six years ago, in the summer of 1884, Mr. 

 William Brewster discovered such a general 

 roost in Belmont, Mass. The place has been 

 used ever since for the same purpose, and is 

 frequently mentioned in the following pages. 

 .) ust as my maimscript is ready for the printer, 



Mr. Brewster informs me that he is to treat 

 the subject in the next issue of The Auk, — 

 for October, 1890, — to which I am happy to 

 refer readers who may wish a more thorough 

 discussion of the matter than I have been able 

 to give. 



