Wake-Robin | Page 7

down very quietly in
their old quarters in remote stumpy fields.
Not long after the bluebird comes the robin, sometimes in March, but in
most of the Northern States April is the month of the robin. In large
numbers they scour the fields and groves. You hear their piping in the
meadow, in the pasture, on the hillside. Walk in the woods, and the dry
leaves rustle with the whir of their wings the air is vocal with their
cheery call. In excess of joy and vivacity, they run, leap, scream, chase
each other through the air, diving and sweeping among the trees with
perilous rapidity.
In that free, fascinating, half-work and half-play
pursuit,--sugar-making,--a pursuit which still lingers in many parts of
New York, as in New England,--the robin is one's constant companion.
When the day is sunny and the ground bare, you meet him at all points
and hear him at all hours. At sunset, on the tops of the tall maples, with
look heavenward, and in a spirit of utter abandonment, he carols his
simple strain. And sitting thus amid the stark, silent trees, above the
wet, cold earth, with the chill of winter still in the air, there is no fitter

or sweeter songster in the whole round year. It is in keeping with the
scene and the occasion. How round and genuine the notes are, and how
eagerly our ears drink them in! The first utterance, and the spell of
winter is thoroughly broken, and the remembrance of it afar off.
Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; He is one
of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic
visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grosbeak, with their
distant, high-bred ways. Hardy, noisy, frolicsome, neighborly, and
domestic in his habits, strong of wing and bold in spirit, he is the
pioneer of the thrush family, and well worthy of the finer artists whose
coming he heralds and in a measure prepares us for.
I could wish Robin less native and plebeian in one respect,--the
building of his nest. Its coarse material and rough masonry are
creditable neither to his skill as a workman nor to his taste as an artist. I
am the more forcibly reminded of his deficiency in this respect from
observing yonder hummingbird's nest, which is a marvel of fitness and
adaptation, a proper setting for this winged gem,--the body of it
composed of a white, felt-like substance, probably the down of some
plant or the wool of some worm, and toned down in keeping with the
branch on which it sits by minute tree-lichens, woven together by
threads as fine and grail as gossamer. From Robin's good looks and
musical turn, we might reasonably predict a domicile of him as clean
and handsome a nest as the king-bird's, whose harsh jingle, compared
with Robin's evening melody, is as the clatter of pots and kettles beside
the tone of a flute. I love his note and ways better even than those of the
orchard starling or the Baltimore oriole; yet his nest, compared with
theirs, is a half-subterranean hut contrasted with a Roman villa. There
is something courtly and poetical in a pensile nest. Next to a castle in
the air is a dwelling suspended to the slender branch of a tall tree,
swayed and rocked forever by the wind. Why need wings be afraid of
falling? Why build only where boys can climb? After all, we must set it
down to the account of Robin's democratic turn: he is no aristocrat, but
one of the people; and therefore we should expect stability in his
workmanship, rather than elegance.

Another April bird, which makes her appearance sometimes earlier and
sometimes later than Robin, and whose memory I fondly cherish, is the
phoebe-bird, the pioneer of the flycatchers. In the inland farming
districts, I used to notice her, on some bright morning about Easter Day,
proclaiming her arrival, with much variety of motion and attitude, from
the peak of the barn or hay-shed. As yet, you may have heard only the
plaintive, homesick note of the bluebird, or the faint trill of the song
sparrow; and Phoebe's clear, vivacious assurance of her veritable bodily
presence among us again is welcomed by all ears. At agreeable
intervals in her lay she describes a circle or an ellipse in the air,
ostensibly prospecting for insects, but really, I suspect, as an artistic
flourish, thrown in to make up in some way for the deficiency of her
musical performance. If plainness of dress indicates powers of song as
it usually does, then Phoebe ought to be unrivaled in musical ability,
for surely that ashen-gray suit is the superlative of plainness; and that
form, likewise, would hardly pass for