Such an opinion we may find in John Burroughs, the American writer on birds; and it may well reassure those who love the robin’s song, but fear to put their favourite bird in the same category with the nightingale, blackcap, and garden-warbler. He writes: ‘The English robin is a better songster than I expected to find him. The poets and writers have not done him justice. He is of the royal line of the nightingale, and inherits some of the qualities of that famous bird. His favourite hour for singing is the gloaming, and I used to hear him the last of all. His song is peculiar, jerky, and spasmodic, but abounds in the purest and most piercing tones to be heard--piercing from their smoothness, intensity, and fulness of articulation; rapid and crowded at one moment, as if some barrier had suddenly given way, then as suddenly pausing, and scintillating at intervals bright, tapering shafts of sound. It stops and hesitates, and blurts out its notes like a stammerer; but when they do come, they are marvellously clear and pure. I have heard green hickory-branches thrown into a fierce blaze jet out the same fine, intense, musical sounds on the escape of the imprisoned vapours in the hard wood as characterise the robin’s song.’ The robin is an early breeder, and makes its nest beneath a hedge, or in a bank, or in a close bush not far above the ground; it is formed of dry grass, leaves, and moss, and lined with feathers. Six or seven eggs are laid, reddish white in ground-colour, clouded or blotched, and freckled with pale red. When the nest is approached the old birds express their anxiety by a very curious sound--a prolonged note so acute that, like the shrill note of some insects and the bat’s cry, it is inaudible to some persons. Two, and even three, broods are raised in the season.