Het A WD Ue RZOUN? (BU bbe Tel N 19 
The Robin (Turdus migratorius) 
By ANNA C. AMES 
PERHAPS THE ROBIN, a typical thrush, is the best known of American birds. 
The male bird has a rusty-red breast, an almost black head and tail, and 
slate gray back and wings. There are white spots on the tips of the outer 
tail feathers and around the eyes. The throat is white, with black streaks. 
The female is similar, but her head is grayish brown. In both sexes the 
terminal two-thirds of the bill is gradually turned downward. The young 
have speckled breasts. 
The Robin’s song is a clear, whistled carol, cheerful rather than melo- 
dious. Another characteristic note of the Robin is a rasping cry when 
danger is at hand. Robins sing most emphatically just before a rain. The 
song selves as an advance notice of spring. The notes have tones and under- 
tones that show the Robin’s relationship to the thrush family. He has 
charming low notes, rapidly repeated in a whisper, with which he woos 
his mate. 
The Robin’s nest is often placed in a crotch at the outer end of a limb 
of the largest tree available, and varies in height from ten to twenty feet. 
Yet Robins are adaptable and will, it seems, build almost anywhere. Usual- 
ly the birds use mud with a foundation of coarse grasses and a lining of 
fine dry grasses. The nest is bulky and often deeply cupped. The three to 
five eggs are the familiar Robin’s-egg blue. Two and sometimes three broods 
are reared in a season. Robins occasionally nest within 25 feet of each other. 
The Robin is found in summer throughout all of North America, from 
tree limit on the north to the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and in winter 
_ through Mexico to the highland of Guatemala. There is a southward move- 
ment in autumn, although Robins are not altogether migratory, as some 
remain in the northern states all winter, where they roost among ever- 
greens in swamps and feed on winter berries. Those that so winter are 
probably hardy birds that nest in Ungava and Labrador. 
Robins not only resort to community roosting places in winter, but also 
establish summer roosts to which some of the old males begin to go nightly 
even in June. Later they are joined by the young birds, and finally old and 
young, male and female, resort to the roost at night. Thousands occupy 
these roosts nightly until the middle of September, when migration begins. 
The economic value of the Robin has often been questioned, as it doubt- 
less eats or injures a great amount of small fruit, especially cherries and 
berries. Yet it is an established fact that the Robin takes ten times as much 
wild as cultivated fruit. Its percentage of vegetable food is larger than 
that of any other American thrush. Noxious insects comprise more than 
one-third of the Robin’s diet. 
In the East the Robin’s fondness for lawns — where it finds earthworms 
— makes it a dooryard bird, but in the West it prefers yellow pine forests 
of the mountains, and in parts of California it lives an uncivilized existence 
in the wild spruce country. The Robin has been chosen as state bird of 
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Connecticut. 
929 Brummell Street, Evanston, Illinois 
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