The valley of the Hudson, I find, forms a great natural highway for
the birds, as do doubtless the Connecticut, the Susquehanna, the
Delaware, and all other large water-courses running north and
south. The birds love an easy way, and in the valleys of the rivers
they find a road already graded for them; and they abound more in
such places throughout the season than they do farther inland. The
swarms of robins that come to us in early spring are a delight to
behold. In one of his poems Emerson speaks of
"April's bird,
Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree;"
but April's bird with me is the robin, brisk, vociferous, musical,
dotting every field, and larking it in every grove; he is as easily
atop at this season as the bobolink is a month or two later. The
tints of April are ruddy and brown,--the new furrow and the
leafless trees,--and these are the tints of its dominant bird.
>From my dining-room window I look, or did look, out upon a long
stretch of smooth meadow, and as pretty a spring sight as I ever
wish to behold was this field, sprinkled all over with robins,
their red breasts turned toward the morning sun, or their pert
forms sharply outlined against lingering patches of snow. Every
morning for weeks I had those robins for breakfast; but what they
had I never could find out.
After the leaves are out, and gayer colors come into fashion, the
robin takes a back seat.
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