| She reared three broods that season; for the third family she returned to the piazza, and repaired the first nest. The following Spring she came again to the piazza, but selected another pillar for the site of her domicile, the construction of which was a decided improvement upon the first. For the next nest she returned to the Oak and raised a second story on the old one of the previous year, but making it much more symmetrical than the one beneath. The present season her first dwelling was as before, erected on a pillar of the piazza — as fine a structure as I ever saw this species build. When this brood was fledged she again repaired to the Oak, and reared a third story on the old domicile, using the moss before mentioned, making a very elaborate affair, and finally finishing up by festooning it with long sprays of moss. This bird and her mate were quite tame. | I fed them
with whortleberries, which they seemed to relish, and
they would come almost to my feet to get them."
The amount of food which the young robin is capable of absorbing is enormous. A couple of vigorous, half-grown birds have been fed, and in twelve hours devoured ravenously, sixty-eight earth worms, weighing thirty-four pennyweight, or forty-one per cent more than their own weight. A man at this rate should eat about seventy pounds of flesh per day, and drink five or six gallons of water. The following poem by the good Quaker poet Whittier is sweet because he wrote it, interesting because it recites an old legend which incidentally explains the color of the robin's breast, and unique because it is one of the few poems about our American bird. |
THE ROBIN.
| My old Welsh neighbor over
the way Crept slowly out in the sun of spring, Pushed from her ears the locks of gray, And listened to hear the robin sing. Her grandson, playing at marbles, stopped, And-cruel in sport, as boys will be Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped From bough to bough in the apple tree. "Nay!" said the grandmother; "have you not heard, My poor, bad boy! of the fiery pit, And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird Carries the water that quenches it? |
"He brings cool dew in his
little bill, And lets it fall on the souls of sin: You can see the mark on his red breast still Of fires that scorch as he drops it in. "My poor Bron rhuddyn! my breast-burned bird, Singing so sweetly from limb to limb, Very dear to the heart of Our Lord Is he who pities the lost like Him. "Amen!" I said to the beautiful myth "Sing, bird of God, in my heart as well: Each good thought is a drop wherewith To cool and lessen the fires of hell. |
"Prayers of love like rain-drops fall,
Tears of pity are cooling dew,
And dear to the heart of Our Lord are all
Who suffer like Him in the good they do."