Bird Neighbors [101]
brown lady-love fail to be impressed with a suitor so gayly dressed, so tender and solicitous, so deliciously sweet-voiced? With fuller, richer song than the warbling vireo's, which Nuttall has said it resembles, a perfect ecstasy of love, pours incessantly from his throat during the early summer days. There is a suggestion of the robins love-song in his, but its copiousness, variety, and rapidity give it a character all its own.
In some old, neglected hedge or low tree about the countryplace a flat, grassy nest, lined with horsehair, contains four or five green eggs in June, and the old birds are devotion itself to each other, and soon to their young, sparrowy brood.
But when parental duties are over, the finches leave our lawns and gardens to join flocks of their own kind in more remote orchards or woods, their favorite haunts. Their subdued warble may be heard during October and later, as if the birds were humming to themselves.
Much is said of their fondness for fruit blossoms and tree buds, but the truth is that noxious insects and seeds of grain constitute their food in summer, the berries of evergreens in winter. To a bird so gay of color, charming of voice, social, and trustful of disposition, surely a few blossoms might be spared without grudging.
THE AMERICAN ROBIN (Merula migratoria) Thrush family
Called also: RED-BREASTED OR MIGRATORY THRUSH; ROBIN-REDBREAST
Length -- 10 inches. Male -- Dull brownish olive-gray above. Head black; tail brownish black, with exterior feathers white at inner tip. Wings dark brownish. Throat streaked with black and white. White eyelids. Entire breast bright rusty red; whitish below the tail. Female -- Duller and with paler breast, resembling the male in autumn. Range -- North America, from Mexico to arctic regions. Migrations -- March. October or November. Often resident throughout the year.
It seems almost superfluous to write a line of description about a bird that is as familiar as a chicken; yet how can this nearest of our bird neighbors be passed without a reference? Probably he was the very first bird we learned to call by name.
The early English colonists, who had doubtless been brought up, like the rest of us, on "The Babes in the Wood," named the bird after the only heroes in that melancholy tale; but in reality the American robin is a much larger bird than the English robin-redbreast and less brilliantly colored. John Burroughs calls him, of all our birds, "the most native and democratic."
How the robin dominates birddom with his strong, aggressive personality! His voice rings out strong and clear in the early morning chorus, and, more tenderly subdued at twilight, it still rises above all the sleepy notes about him. Whether lightly tripping over the lawn after the "early worm," or rising with his sharp, quick cry of alarm, when startled, to his nest near by, every motion is decided, alert, and free. No pensive hermit of the woods, like his cousins, the thrushes, is this joyous vigorous "bird of the morning." Such a presence is inspiriting.
Does any bird excel the robin in the great variety of his vocal expressions? Mr. Parkhurst, in his charming "Birds' Calendar," says he knows of "no other bird that is able to give so many shades of meaning to a single note, running through the entire gamut of its possible feelings. From the soft and mellow quality, almost as coaxing as a dove's note, with which it encourages its young when just out of the nest, the tone, with minute gradations, becomes more vehement, and then harsh and with quickened reiteration, until it expresses the greatest intensity of a bird's emotions. Love, contentment, anxiety, exultation, rage -- what other bird can throw such multifarious meaning into its tone? And herein the robin seems more nearly human than any of its kind."
There is no one thing that attracts more birds about the house that a drinking-dish -- large enough for a bathtub as well; and certainly no bird delights in sprinkling the water over his back more than a robin, often aided in his ablutions
In some old, neglected hedge or low tree about the countryplace a flat, grassy nest, lined with horsehair, contains four or five green eggs in June, and the old birds are devotion itself to each other, and soon to their young, sparrowy brood.
But when parental duties are over, the finches leave our lawns and gardens to join flocks of their own kind in more remote orchards or woods, their favorite haunts. Their subdued warble may be heard during October and later, as if the birds were humming to themselves.
Much is said of their fondness for fruit blossoms and tree buds, but the truth is that noxious insects and seeds of grain constitute their food in summer, the berries of evergreens in winter. To a bird so gay of color, charming of voice, social, and trustful of disposition, surely a few blossoms might be spared without grudging.
THE AMERICAN ROBIN (Merula migratoria) Thrush family
Called also: RED-BREASTED OR MIGRATORY THRUSH; ROBIN-REDBREAST
Length -- 10 inches. Male -- Dull brownish olive-gray above. Head black; tail brownish black, with exterior feathers white at inner tip. Wings dark brownish. Throat streaked with black and white. White eyelids. Entire breast bright rusty red; whitish below the tail. Female -- Duller and with paler breast, resembling the male in autumn. Range -- North America, from Mexico to arctic regions. Migrations -- March. October or November. Often resident throughout the year.
It seems almost superfluous to write a line of description about a bird that is as familiar as a chicken; yet how can this nearest of our bird neighbors be passed without a reference? Probably he was the very first bird we learned to call by name.
The early English colonists, who had doubtless been brought up, like the rest of us, on "The Babes in the Wood," named the bird after the only heroes in that melancholy tale; but in reality the American robin is a much larger bird than the English robin-redbreast and less brilliantly colored. John Burroughs calls him, of all our birds, "the most native and democratic."
How the robin dominates birddom with his strong, aggressive personality! His voice rings out strong and clear in the early morning chorus, and, more tenderly subdued at twilight, it still rises above all the sleepy notes about him. Whether lightly tripping over the lawn after the "early worm," or rising with his sharp, quick cry of alarm, when startled, to his nest near by, every motion is decided, alert, and free. No pensive hermit of the woods, like his cousins, the thrushes, is this joyous vigorous "bird of the morning." Such a presence is inspiriting.
Does any bird excel the robin in the great variety of his vocal expressions? Mr. Parkhurst, in his charming "Birds' Calendar," says he knows of "no other bird that is able to give so many shades of meaning to a single note, running through the entire gamut of its possible feelings. From the soft and mellow quality, almost as coaxing as a dove's note, with which it encourages its young when just out of the nest, the tone, with minute gradations, becomes more vehement, and then harsh and with quickened reiteration, until it expresses the greatest intensity of a bird's emotions. Love, contentment, anxiety, exultation, rage -- what other bird can throw such multifarious meaning into its tone? And herein the robin seems more nearly human than any of its kind."
There is no one thing that attracts more birds about the house that a drinking-dish -- large enough for a bathtub as well; and certainly no bird delights in sprinkling the water over his back more than a robin, often aided in his ablutions