NEST BUILDING 297 



das. I went to my front veranda one spring to 

 wipe a soiled place from a window. Someone 

 called me inside, so I laid my cloth on the railing, 

 and went to see what was wanted. On my return 

 the cloth had vanished; after a thorough search, I 

 discovered a pair of robins gleefully tugging at it 

 on the branch of a big elm tree nearby. It served 

 as a part of the foundation of their nest. Luckily, 

 they found it so early in their work that the other 

 material almost covered it; the nest was not so 

 conspicuous as I feared it would be. One summer, 

 a pair of robins that had previously built two nests 

 of material gathered in the orchard, near the Cabin, 

 south, had just laid the foundations of a third 

 nest in a plum tree beside my bedroom window, 

 when they discovered a bundle of long, white, 

 newspaper trimmings that had been used for pack- 

 ing. Instantly those birds abandoned what would 

 have been considered "instinctive" or natural 

 material, and with such chatter and excitement as 

 I never before heard from brooding birds, both of 

 them attacked the paper. They had to fly much 

 farther to secure it than the material they had been 

 using, while it was in long strips, troublesome to 

 carry and place. Tags two feet long streamed 

 from the birds as they flew and the completed 

 nest on all sides. This paper and mud to hold it 

 were the only materials used after its discovery. 

 The nest was as large as a half -peck measure and 

 snow white. It was so conspicuous that it required 



