38 STORIES OF BIRD LIFE 



served. Thus the greater part of the construction of the 

 nest was carried forward in the early morning while few 

 people were astir. Seldom would any work be done from 

 the breakfast hour until after students ceased to cross the 

 campus in numbers, which was about nine o'clock. Then 

 for an hour or more the building was rushed. Only during 

 the last few days of its construction did I detect them 

 working during an afternoon. The morning was, of all 

 the day, the favorite time for nest making. Perhaps one 

 reason for this was that blades of dead grass, straw and 

 other nesting stuff were then damp and pliable, owing to 

 the night dews, and were much more easily woven into 

 position than after they had become dry and hard. 



In a little pool at the end of a leaky horse trough, the 

 birds gathered the mud needed to daub their nest and 

 carried it home in their bills. In dry seasons when suitable 

 mud is difficult to find, robins have been known to carry 

 water in their beaks to a road and there mix the mud for 

 themselves. 



On the 18th of April the nest appeared to be completed, 

 for no more materials were brought. On the 22nd the 

 female began sitting. I could see her tail extending over 

 one side of the nest, and her bill pointing upward at a 

 sharp angle from the other. She flew off the first day, 

 when the half hundred young men who frequented that 



