HARVEST OF WILD PLACES 101 



near our pasture by the black cherry tree close to the 

 old fence just over the ridge toward a desolate cellar- 

 hole. It is the lush time of Summer when this tree is in 

 fruit, the time when the baby birds are getting their 

 growth, when the mother robins are anxiously busy. 

 Man may have forsaken this clearing, but if we take our 

 stand quietly under the cherry tree, and wait a few 

 moments till the frightened birds are reassured, we find 

 ourselves in the midst of almost feverish avian activity. 

 Robins dart into the tree incessantly, making a con- 

 siderable noise about it, too. Now and then a big 

 flicker comes winging into the branches. There is the 

 gorgeous flash of an oriole, and sometimes, perhaps, the 

 brilliance of a rose-breasted grosbeak or a tanager. 

 Only the robins so haunt our domestic cherry trees (can 

 you not remember how as a boy you were startled, when 

 robbing a neighbour's tree, by the rush of wings almost 

 against your face?) ; and I have been told that even in an 

 orchard, if a wild cherry is planted amid the cultivated 

 sorts, the red-breasted trespassers will choose it in 

 preference. Perhaps they find the small fruit better for 

 their young. I have seen a mother robin in our garden 

 try twelve successive times to stuff a large red cherry 

 down the throat of her offspring, and give up the task 

 only when the fruit was entirely battered off the stone. 

 The wild cherry trees, of course, are undesirable to the 

 gardener because they harbour so many insect pests, 

 especially tent caterpillars, but if these pests were kept 



