102 What Birds Have Done With Me 



usually plenty. During the past winter one gun- 

 ner killed over 300 Robins in one day, and in one 

 village in the state the boys and young men are 

 vying with each other for a record in Robin- 

 killing, the present high score being 200 birds in 

 one day.' Better, by far, sentiment than slaugh- 

 ter, as the one preserves and the other destroys 

 what is of great value, as will be proven later." 



From these gloomy pictures of greed, and 

 blood-lust and depravity, I turn to the annual 

 visits of a pair of Robins possibly escapes from 

 the bird shambles in Tennessee who for five 

 years nested in a vegetable dish on a two-by-four, 

 in an open passageway, just outside my office door. 

 The first little dish was left there by accident 

 and found and appropriated by the birds, and 

 afterward was put there for their convenience. 

 What beautiful confidence and seeming affection 

 for man in spite of his vile treatment of them in 

 certain localities; building their home, without 

 hands, open to human inspection by the door 

 where he passed many times a day. Later on, the 

 bright-eyed babies adopted each visitor as a foster 

 parent and never failed to stretch wide their big, 

 wide mouths for supplementary feedings. Ours 

 was the only dish of Robins to be spoken of with- 

 out loathing and disgust. It was surely the same 

 pair that came year after year to an accustomed 

 nesting place, for after the fifth year no nest has 



