﻿A Bit of Robin History 



By EUGENIA CHAPMAN GILLETTE, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin 

 With photographs from nature by the Author 



THEY had gone to housekeeping the preceding summer in the hard 

 maple just opposite my window; and, though they built well above 

 the level of the chimney-top, tragedy overtook them when the 

 young were but half-fledged. 



The following season, they built where they could command the pro- 

 tection of their friends who had locks and keys. On Saturday morning, 

 April 18, 1903, as I sat long at the breakfast table, idly watching the 

 boughs blowing about in the high wind, my attention was attracted by a 

 piece of white cord that came sailing across the upper sash of the window. 

 Before I arose from the table the same, or a similar piece of cord blew 

 across that window for the third time. Then I bestirred myself, and went 

 out to see what wind was bringing us such an abundance of white string. 



And there was my friend Mrs. Robin, of the previous year. I knew her 

 by having only the left outer tail-feather tipped with white. 



She busily wrought, against discouraging odds, at the foundation of a 

 new home, on the ledge of my chamber window, above. Every time. she 

 succeeded in getting a considerable collection of material on the ledge, a 

 particularly prankish gust would come along and sweep it clean again. And 

 at nightfall, after a hard day's work, there was the merest suggestion of 

 building material there. 



Sunday morning dawned bright and still, and with the first glimmer 

 came Madam Robin with string and coarse grass, which she plastered 

 securely to the ledge with the mud she carried up from beneath our 

 neighbor's pump. "The better the day, the better the deed," and Mrs. 

 Robin worked buoyantly all that bright Sabbath day, making minute-and- 

 a-half trips for her lumber and plaster, and by late afternoon she was lining 

 the nest with fine grass, tucking the ends in carefully with her beak, and 

 ' carding' with her little feet, which flew with lighting speed, as she pressed 

 her breast against the walls, and turned round and round in the nest, 

 moulding it to the right curve. 



When all was done she flew up into the maple tree, made repeated 

 descents upon this joy of her heart, alighting first upon the brink, and then 

 cuddling down ecstatically. During all this time her spouse had not 

 appeared, and about sundown she flew away, and was gone for five long days. 



I wearied for her return, and wondered if she had found other quarters 

 she considered preferable, or if, perchance, she had gone a-visiting her 

 relations, or was taking the precaution to have the plaster thoroughly dry 

 before moving in. I never learned the reason of her absence, but on the 

 morning of April 24., she came, with Mr. Robin, and took possession of 



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