MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 71 



PECULIAR NESTING BEHAVIOR OF A ROBIN. 



BY BERTRAM G. SMITH. 



Early in Ma}', 1914, Miss Mary Goddard called my attention to 

 tlie [)eciiliar behavior of a robin which was nesting on the fire 

 escape just outside the window of her office on the second floor of 

 the Science Building.* The robin had begun the construction of a 

 series of five nests, located on five successive steps of the stairway. 

 The first nest, located on the first step above the platform, was 

 represented by only a few bits of nest-building material; the second 

 nest was nearly finished ; the third, fourth and fifth were in succes- 

 sivel}' earlier stages of construction, the last one being only slightly 

 more advanced than the first. During the next few days the second 

 and third nests were completed, but only slight additions were made 

 to the other tw'o. Nest-building was then discontinued. An egg 

 was laid in the second nest and another in the third ; an additional 

 egg was then laid in the second nest. (See PI. IV.) The robin 

 then commenced the task of incubating the eggs, dividing her time 

 between the two nests containing eggs. After about five days she 

 abandoned the nests; possibly she was frightened away. 



It seems quite certain that the nests were the work of a single 

 robin, or at most a single pair of robins. Robins do not ordinarily 

 nest in communities; only one robin at a time was ever seen near 

 the nests. It is certain that none of the nests were left over from 

 the preceding year. 



This strange nesting behavior naturally aroused much interest 

 among the students and teachers. The comments brought forth indi- 

 cated that most of the observers thought the bird was crazy — ''that 

 fool robin" was the way one person expressed it. My own interpre- 

 tation is that the bird was perfectly normal, but that the circum- 

 stances served to test the limitations of the robin mind. The 

 locality-memory of the bird was confused by the similarity of the 

 successive steps. In other words, we may regard the whole affair 

 as an experiment whose results show that the robin cannot count. 

 It is significant that the nests were built simultaneously, not suc- 

 cessivelj^ If we were to plot a curve showing the amounts (by 

 \\ eight) of the material on successive steps, the curve would indi- 

 cate that the material was distributed in the main according to the 



*Zo()lr)iri<\il Lalioratory. Micliisan State Normal College, Ypsilanti. 



