"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.
Blackbirds