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 by the spattering of the sparrows. But see to it that this
drinking-dish is well raised above the reach of lurking cats.
While the robin is a famous splasher, his neatness stops there. A robin's nest
is notoriously dirty within, and so carelessly constructed of weed-stalks,
grass, and mud, that a heavy summer shower brings more robins' nests to the
ground than we like to contemplate. The color of the eggs, as every one knows,
has given their name to the tint. Four is the number of eggs laid, and two
broods are often reared in the same nest.
Too much stress is laid on the mischief done by the robins in the cherry trees
and strawberry patches, and too little upon the quantity of worms and insects
they devour. Professor Treadwell, who experimented upon some young robins kept
in captivity, learned that they ate sixty-eight earthworms daily -- "that is,
each bird ate forty-one per cent more than its own weight in twelve hours! The
length of these worms, if laid end to end, would be about fourteen feet. Man,
at this rate, would eat about seventy pounds of flesh a day, and drink five or
six gallons of water."