116 THE ROBIN, OR REDBREAST. 
cornice, or on some curtain top, warbling their 
song when the day is clear, or the fire burns 
brightly, and in every way seeming at ease and 
in confidence with the inmates. 
During the breeding season, they seem equally 
to live either in company or retirement ; for while, 
at this time, we shall find many in our woods and 
plantations placing their nest under some broken 
bank, or supported by some break or hole in the 
trunk of a tree, rearing their young on the food 
which nature has supplied, and singing the song 
in complete seclusion ; we shall find as many 
around our gardens and out-houses, gaining their 
sustenance with the poultry, building their nest 
in the very midst of bustle and labour, and hatch- 
ing their family amidst all the motion and noise. 
Garden houses and tool sheds, the green-house, 
holes in the walls, and above all, the inside of 
saw pits are in their turn chosen. We scarcely 
recollect one of those old-fashioned sunk sawpits 
built on the sides with dry stones, moss-grown 
with time, and margined with a split log, that 
did not possess its Robins, quietly sitting, while 
the men wrought, often within the distance of a 
yard. Sawmills, and the structures of the 
modern time, are sadly deficient in convenience 
for the inmates of the forest or grove. 
In its habits, the Robin is naturally solitary or 
lives in pairs. It is arboreal, though at the same 
time a great part of its food is taken on the ground, 
t;he grass or leaves being turned over by the 
bill, but the necessity for which is often pre- 
