216 
CHARACTER OF THE REDBREAST. 
covered, to save it from destruction ; if unprotected, it was certain to be eaten. I have known 
them to visit laborers at breakfast-time to eat butter from their hands, and enter a lantern to 
feast on the candle. One, as I have been assured, is in the constant habit of entering a house 
in a tan-yard, by the window, that it might feed upon tallow, when the men were using this 
substance in the preparation of hides. But even further than this, I have seen the Redbreast 
exhibit its partiality for scraps of fat, etc. Being present one day in December, 1837, when a 
golden eagle was fed, a Robin, to my surprise, took the eagle’s place on the perch the moment 
that he descended to the ground to eat some food given him, and when there, picked off some 
little fragments of fat or scraps of flesh ; this done, it quite unconcernedly alighted on the 
chain on which the 4 rapacious ’ bird was fastened. 
44 1 at the same time learned that this Robin regularly visited the eagle’s abode at feeding- 
time, though as yet there was no severity of weather. Although the Robin escaped the golden 
eagle unscathed, as much cannot be said for one which occasionally entered the kitchen at the 
REDBREAST AND REDSTART .— Erythacus rubecula and Ruticllla phmnicurus. 
Falls, and sang there ; having one day alighted on a cage in which a toucan was kept, this 
bird with its huge bill seized and devoured it.” Another Robin, mentioned by the same 
author, was in the habit of attending on a carpenter, stealing the shavings as materials for his 
nest, and making very free with his grease-pot, pecking from it while in his hand. 
The Robin is also remarkably fond of bread and butter on which honey or sugar has been 
spread, and will eat of this dainty until it is hardly able to fly. One of these birds who had 
been treated to such a repast, was so pleased with it that he returned, bringing with him three 
companions, who gorged themselves to such a degree, that they were taken up by hand, and 
put away for the night into a comfortable recess. After a while, between twenty and thirty 
Robins came to the house in hopes of obtaining the sweet food. Perhaps they may be instinct- 
ively led to sugar and fatty substances, as a means of preserving themselves against the effects 
of cold. Cream is in great favor with the birds during the winter months, and they have been 
seen to enter an outhouse which was employed for washing purposes, and to eat the soap. 
The Redbreast is a most combative bird, fighting its own species with singular energy, 
and often killing its opponent. One of these birds killed upwards of twenty of its own kind, 
