204 American Birds 



as if I were about to lose my head for taking my own 

 cherries. 



In a plum tree a short distance away I found a nest 

 that had been vacated a few days before by a brood of 

 four young robins. Out of this I picked twenty-seven 

 seeds. On the ground below the nest were a whole hand- 

 ful of pits. But no one can begrudge a few cherries in 

 payment for the horde of insects and worms destroyed by 

 the birds. 



I was standing in the back yard watching a robin that 

 came for string to build her nest. I had wrapped a piece 

 several times about a limb to see whether the bird would 

 use any intelligence in unwinding it. I have always been 

 skeptical of some of the stories that have been told of birds 

 reasoning. For example, one writer tells of an oriole that 

 took a piece of cloth and hung it on a thorn so the thread 

 could be pulled out. When the cloth came loose, he said 

 the bird refastened it. Again, he has the bird tying knots 

 in the string to keep the ends from fraying in the wind 

 or tying the sticks together to make support for the nest. 

 But these are not bird actions: they were evolved out of 

 the fertile brain of the writer. 



As soon as the robin spied the string I had placed in 

 the tree she thought it good for her nest. She lit on the 

 branch and took it in her bill, and, finding it caught, she 

 gave it a hard tug. Twice she started to fly away with it, 

 but she pulled up with a sharp jerk. She could see and 

 reason no further than the end of the twine. Had she 

 unfolded one or two wraps about the limb, the whole 

 would have come loose. Again and again she took a try 

 at that string with the same success, until she got it tangled 



