4 



WiDMANN, A Winter Robin Roost in Missouri. 



r Auk 

 L Jan. 



the swamp. A few Rustics may still linger in the neighborhood 

 but no Robin is heard or seen. Where did they all go ? 



It takes considerable quantities of food to satisfy so many 

 thousands of birds and we should therefore not wonder to find 

 them fifty and more miles away from the roost, visiting certain 

 known feeding grounds or wandering in search of new ones and 

 still return in the evening to the same roost, day by day, for 

 weeks, and some of them even for months. 



With the advent of severe winter weather, generally about the 

 middle or last part of November, the great majority leave this 

 northern roost, presumably for another roost in more southern 

 climes, but enough remain in ordinary seasons, such as 1893-94, 

 throughout the winter, to send detachments on foraging expedi- 

 tions to regions as far away as St. Louis County. Suppose a 

 frosty morning in midwinter, with the sun just rising in its cold 

 splendor, finds us standing in the wooded bottomland on the 

 right bank of the Missouri River, near Creve Cceur Lake, 

 thirty-five miles southeast of the roost. Flickers have just left 

 their sleeping apartments in the high old timber and are gathering 

 on tree-tops to enjoy the first rays of the rising orb. Troops of 

 Red-winged Blackbirds and smaller parties of Cowbirds have 

 passed by, coming from a neighboring roost. The first Crows 

 are appearing on the scene, tired by the uninterrupted flight from 

 the distant roost. It is now ten minutes since the sun is in the 

 sky, when all at a sudden the startling notes of the Robin are 

 heard overhead and a dozen or so alight in the tree-tops to rest a 

 minute or two. While we are yet watching them, a few more are 

 seen coming from the same direction in the northwest and after 

 making things lively for a few moments, calling and chattering, 

 all are gone, proceeding on their tour through St. Louis County. 

 We may meet them again, some time during the day, somewhere 

 along the border of a shallow water or in the recesses of a dilapi- 

 dated forest, feeding among the debris in company with several 

 kinds of Sparrows, Bluebirds and similar braves who risk their 

 lives to prove the mildness of a Missouri winter. 



• Since writing the above I have visited, in the last week of October, a very 

 large roost in the flags of Indian Slough, a branch of the St. Francis River, 

 southern Missouri, not far from the Arkansas state line. 



