Tourist Robins and Waxwings 
By Elizabeth Grinnell 
This is the ninth of a series of studies of the birds of California by Elizabeth Grinnell, 
of Pasadena, the author, in collaboration with Joseph Grinnell, of “Birds of Song and Story. ’’ 
The illustrations are from photographs from life by the author. The first of these articles, 
“A California Christmas Carol,” appeared in December (190%) Sunset; the second, beginning 
“The Stoi'y of Anna,” in January (1903); the third, continuing “The Story of Anna,” in 
March; the fourth, “A Pair of April Fools,” in April; the fifth, “His Excellency, the Mocker,” 
in May; the sixth, “Story of an Oriole’s Nest,” in July; the seventh, “The Linnet,” in 
August; the eighth, “Home for Thanksgiving,” in November. 
T HE holidays and new year are sure 
to bring them, these annual tour¬ 
ists to the sunny south. Some¬ 
where north, in the cool, damp moun¬ 
tains of our border land, they summered. 
They nested side by side in bush or 
tree as fancy chose, the main difference 
in the materials used being a little mud 
for the robins. Both interlaced sticks 
the squirrels and chipmunks and blue- 
jays, any of which highway robbers are 
fond of eggs for breakfast. 
Now there is a fact concerning robins 
and waxwings the farmer folk of Cali¬ 
fornia overlook, they having an eye 
mostly to their fruit crops. Said birds 
eat little else during the long summer 
months save insect life, feeding the same 
/ managed to lay hands on a robin 
of last year’s weeds, leaf skeletons from 
the margin of brooks, and soft fluffy 
down which had served as wings for cer¬ 
tain seed people to travel by. 
There might be one more, or one less 
than four, blue eggs in either nest at 
last; though for the matter of wax¬ 
wings and robins being quite sure of a 
family, it all depended upon outwitting 
to their young. The beetles and scale 
lice may well shiver underneath their 
brittle shell backs at the whirr of wings, 
and the crickets and grasshoppers trem¬ 
ble in their boots at the approach 
of strangers they have learned to de¬ 
spise. 
The cedar waxwings are the self-same 
friends of other days, with the same 
