98 Bird - Lore 
On another wall of the house in which the landlord lives is a flat box that 
has served for several years as a foundation for the nest of a pair of Robins. 
Here the mother bird “securely rears her young”—two broous each summer. 
No neighbor’s skulking cat has been able to disturb her, for she is out of his 
reach. No pugnacious Bluebird, or darting Hawk, flies under the porch roof, to 
inyade her quiet home. A bird of peace, herself, she lives and toils in peace. 
She, also, has posed, though rather unwillingly, for phutographs—the only rental 
the landlord asks of his tenants. In the first picture she is admiring her four little 
ones, which are yet too small to show above the walls of the nest. But, later, 
they had sufficiently thrived on 
their diet of grubs and worms to 
be clearly in evidence when break- 
fast was ready. The mud worm 
which one favored, or rather, early 
bird tried to swallow fell into 
its throat like a coiled rope, 
and threatened to choke it. The 
watchful mother again seized it, 
and safely lowered it down in a 
straight line. 
One morning, after these birds 
had left home, the landlord was 
watching them bathing in the foun- 
tain near-by, into which one of the 
young birds tumbled. Looking up, 
he saw the Robin’s nest preémpted ~ 
by a Barn Swallow. The bird was 
twisting itself about in the nest, 
just as its former occupant had done 
in making it round and smooth. 
PROTECTION The Swallow made a Iudicrous 
appearance in.the nest, which was doubly large for it; and when its ceased its 
gyrations for a moment to get breath, nothing showed except the ends of its 
forked tail and the tips of its primaries. Evidently the Barn Swallow had been 
working for some time on its new home, for the nest showed a layer of mud built 
partially around the top of the walls. Though the Robin’s nest was at first much 
too large for the Swallow, the landlord concluded that this additional mud wall 
was the result of the building instinct that even prompts our domestic fowl to 
throw pieces of hay over her back and around her sides, when thrown off the 
nest where she is determined to sit. But the work of the claim-, or nest-jum- 
per, was thrown away; for the next morning disclosed the rightful owner in full 
possession, lining the old nest with dried grass. In four days more, as many eggs 
were laid and in due time they added another quartet to young Robinhood. 
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