WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS 



"But the siding and shingling of the upper walls come next," 

 he objected. "Shall we pen them in?" 



"No, go on with your work just as if they were not there. 

 When the walls are inclosed there will be three windows left, and 

 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 up-stairs, and we also found 

 a way to give them access to their nest after the building was in- 

 closed ; so that two families occupied our new home before we did. 



The next season, on the twenty-eighth of February, I was 

 amazed to hear my Robin calling me and looked out to see him on 

 the grape-arbor 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 ar- 

 rive and I did not know what to do. Food and water were hastily 

 set out and he ate and drank as if quite hungry. By mid-after- 

 noon 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 about an old summer 

 kitchen left standing on the back of the lot, and 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, and the bird went into the loft. His droppings proved next 

 morning that he had perched in the box as I had hoped. Two 

 days later his mate came and 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- 



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