Recently in a letter to the Burroughs' Nature Study Clubs of a Southern
state John Burroughs wrote:
"If your club can help to send back the robin to us in the
spring with his breast unstained with his own blood, but
glowing with the warmth of your shining and hospitable land, I
shall rejoice that it bears my name."
The people in the Northern United States have courted favor with the
robin and in every way possible protect him, and are always ready to
welcome him back after the winter is over, and in fact, the robin is to
be praised for his summer popularity as much as he is to be pitied for
his winter treatment in the south. One writer says his return to the
north 'is announced by the newspapers like that of eminent or notorious
people to a watering place, as the first authentic notification of
spring.' There, where robins are appreciated, they become quite tame and
build and raise their young in the orchards and about the houses. Birds
are not altogether unlike people in that they never forget favors. They
always know in what sections of country they are welcomed.
When robin redbreast returns south, he comes driven by the chilly blasts
of the Ice King of the north, and I regret to say has to face the
Southern people with fear and trembling. Parents allow boys to take guns
and go out and kill anything legally or illegally, and such boys always
develop the brutal and barbarous instinct of murder--taking innocent
blood. The following I clipped from the locals of a weekly newspaper in
the Southern part of Georgia:
"They have about succeeded in killing all the robins out at 'Robin's
Roost,' near Robert's Mill. Thousands of these birds had been flying to
a ford near there to roost, and they offered fine sport for those who
like shooting."
The reporter of the above seemed to count it a success to kill all the
robins. Moreover he affirms that killing them is fine sport. This spirit
of slaughter is no doubt born in us, but it does seem that we could
teach the young how to love, to protect, and to enjoy rather than to
kill! kill! kill! Some boys I know can hardly bear to see a live bird of
any kind, but are perfectly at ease if they can kill something. They
take some weapon with them as religiously as they take their books to
school, in order that nothing escape them. They are always hoping to see
some form of bird life to persecute or slaughter. Our public schools
are beginning to interest themselves in bird protection, and I am glad
to say, have accomplished great good wherever they have tried to teach
simple lessons of bird life to school children.
The robin is too valuable to exterminate as he feeds upon noxious weed
seeds and injurious insects, and usually has a good appetite and
certainly never eats useful plants in the south. His practical value to
Orchards and Agriculture generally, should be impressed upon parents and
a love for him impressed upon the younger minds. When we cannot appeal
through either of these channels, we should arouse the sympathy of the
public. Robins ordinarily come south to spend the winter, as the weather
is much warmer and they get a greater food supply. But in 1905, a small
flock of them wintered near Lake Forest, Illinois. This I think was due
to the fact that the birds did not care to face their enemies of the
South. In that section of country from Lake Forest to Waukegan,
Illinois, not a robin had been shot for several years past. The birds
knew their friends and preferred to brave the Northern winter with them,
rather than come down south where our youths are forever running through
the woods with gun on shoulder ready to take life.
Burroughs says: "Robin is one of our most native and democratic birds;
he is one of the family (in the north) and seems much more to us than
those rare exotic visitors with their distant and high-bred ways." The
carol of the robin is very inspiring as you hear him:
"Heavenward lift his evening hymn,"
or perhaps when you first wake in the morning at early dawn, and listen
to his love song, as he perches on some treetop in the edge of a nearby
woods. How rich his red breast looks from such a perch just as the sun
comes above the horizon and reflects its first rays against him! Just
one experience like this in the whole year, how much it would add to
life's pleasures! "With this pleasing association with the opening
season, amidst the fragrance of flowers and the improving verdure of the
fields, we listen with peculiar pleasure to the simple song of the
robin. The confidence he reposes in us by making his abode in our
gardens and orchards, the frankness and innocence of his manners,
besides his vocal powers to please, inspire respect and attachment, even
in the truant schoolboy, and his exposed nest is but rarely molested,"
says Nuttall, who writes eloquently of the robin.
The robin sings in autumn as well as in spring, and his autumn song is
by no means inferior to his spring song, and I have always loved the old
song, _Good-bye to Summer_, because of the special tribute to the
robin's song, the chorus of which goes,
"O, Robin, Robin, redbreast!
O, Robin, Robin, dear!
O, Robin, sing so sweetly,
In the falling of the year!"
It is rather interesting to note, however, that they usually sing in
concert when they return south in the autumn. You can hear them in great
numbers singing while feeding around a patch of _Ilex glabra_, the
berries of which afford them considerable food in mid-winter. I love to
welcome them back to the south in the autumn, and to hear their
beautiful concert song.