I love Robin Redbreast above all other birds. He is a bold, handsome fellow, and one of the sweetest songsters of the grove. When the Nightingale and the Blackcap have gone to their winter quarters in the faraway sunny South, and both the Thrush and the Skylark are silent, courageous Redbreast mounts to the topmost branch of some sodden, leafless tree and defiantly pours out his sweet, silvery notes. Poets of all ages have noticed this peculiar characteristic, and one of them has expressed it very happily in the following lines: “Each woodland pipe is mute Save when the Redbreast mourns the falling leafs; Now plaintively, in interrupted trills, He sings the dirge of the departing year.” There can be no doubt that the conditions under which the bird sings help to rivet our attention upon its performance, just in the same way that the Nightingale gains some of its popularity by singing at night time when other woodland vocalists are silent, and the Skylark by soaring away up in the blue vault of heaven whilst pouring out its far-sounding music. [Illustration: ROBIN’S NEST.] Cock Robin has received a great deal of poetic attention, and it is amusing to note how differently the bards have expressed themselves in regard to this familiar bird “that swells its little breast so full of song.” Some of them say it warbles, others it whistles, tootles, carols, chirps, sings, sobs, mourns, and so on. Any boy or girl who has wandered through the woods in winter will at once recognise the truth and beauty of the following lines from Cowper’s “Winter’s Walk at Noon”: “No noise is here, or none that hinders thought; The Redbreast warbles still, but is content With slender notes and more than half suppressed; Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray where’er he rests, he shakes From many a twig the pendent drops of ice, That tinkle in the wither’d leaves below. Stillness accompanied with sounds so soft Charms more than silence.” Numbers of beautiful legends have been woven round the bird. For instance, its ruddy breast is supposed to be worn in memory of the day when Jesus was led forth from Jerusalem to be crucified, and the wee bird perched upon the Cross and “tried with all its little might to diminish the anguish of the crown of thorns.” [Illustration: COCK ROBIN BRINGING FOOD FOR HIS CHICKS.] It was an old and popular belief that Robins covered over the bodies of dead men with leaves, hence John Webster’s ballad: “Call for the Robin Redbreast and the Wren,[1] Since o’er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men”; and the well-known one, “Babes in the Wood.”