ii 4 APRIL 



almost petulant little succession of squeaks from the 

 outside window-sill ; and now there appeared a second 

 robin, very much fluffed out and looking rather in a fuss. 

 She stood half in, half out of the room, with her mouth 

 open, uttering from time to time this cricket-like note. 

 It was a demand for food ; and the braver bird responded 

 with singular emphasis. He seized a bit of butter, flew 

 back to the window, and stoked his exigent mate as if she 

 were a stove. Well into her open mouth went his beak, 

 and if the butter was particularly adhesive, he had to 

 repeat the stoking four or five times before her mandibles 

 quite cleared his mouth of the supplies. The process was 

 repeated interminably. Her desire to absorb and his 

 readiness to impart seemed equally insatiable. The 

 manoeuvre seemed unlikely to reach an end, when I tried 

 an experiment and pijt the bread and butter in my hand 

 and stretched it out. The cock robin, perched on the 

 edge of a chair within two or three inches, cocked his 

 head on one side, and looked alternately at me and the 

 butter. He would have fed again perhaps, for his courage 

 is unbounded, but at this crisis the falsetto cries of the hen 

 ceased. Xanthippe was either sated or apprehensive. He 

 flew back to her, and the pair of them whisked round the 

 corner to the nest. It is only a few feet from the window, 

 some eight feet up (very high for a robin), in ivy that 

 runs up between a buttress and the wall. Had they con 

 cealed some of this butter in their mouths, and was the 

 mother filling herself with infant or predigested food, or 

 was she just hungry and a little greedy ? 



The scales are weighted in favour of her greed ; for 

 this performance has been witnessed daily for the last 

 six weeks. The hen made the same shrill demands, and 

 the cock satisfied them with like generosity. He will 

 feed himself on occasion. The other day, seeing no 



