FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 



if you come to them before the birds are gone you can leave out 

 a north one nearest the nest." 



A day or two later one of the men told me a pair of Wrens was 

 building over a dormer window upstairs, so we found a way to 

 give them access to their nest also, after the building was enclosed. 

 Two families occupied our new home before we did. 



The following season, on the twenty-eighth of February, 

 I was amazed to hear my Robin calling me. I looked out to see 

 him on the grape-arbour peering into a back window. It was a 

 moderate day, bright and sunny, but there would come a heavy 

 freeze at any time. It was five weeks earlier than any other 

 Robins would arrive so I did not know what to do. Food and 

 water were hastily set out and he ate and drank as if very hungry. 

 By mid-afternoon the clouds gathered, a northern wind swept 

 down and snow began to fall. Poor Robin did not know what to 

 do and we did not know either. At last I saw him peering 

 around an old summer kitchen left standing on the back of the 

 lot; that gave me an idea. 



I hurried down, opened a small door in the loft above the 

 door below and shoved back on the rafters a warm box covered 

 with an old coat and hay. I barely had it fixed when the storm 

 broke in fury. The bird went into the loft. His droppings 

 proved the following morning that he had perched in the box 

 as I had hoped. Two days later his mate came. They took 

 possession of the premises and lived in the shed loft at night. 

 Long before the snow was off the ground they were pulling last 

 year's dead dry grass-blades from underneath it, and on the sunny 

 side of each little hummock working to pick off mud for plaster. 



They located where the logs crossed at a corner over a back 

 door and built this nest. A finer piece of Robin architecture 

 would be difficult to find. There were no twigs to be used. 

 They could not find any. All the material they had to draw on 



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