14 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



red osier dogwood bushes or in a tall hedge of 

 ancient, tangled syringa. These birds, which were 

 extremely friendly and would sit on a low branch 

 and mock us as we stood below and whistled, un- 

 doubtedly steal raspberries, but not enough to cause 

 any serious loss. The robins, however, which are 

 always extremely numerous, as many as a dozen 

 nests having been built on the place in a season, did 

 annoy us each year by completely stripping a cherry- 

 tree. If we had grown cherries commercially we 

 should have had to take steps to protect the fruit. 

 But with these two exceptions all the bird activi- 

 ties we were able to observe were beneficent. 



For instance, a pair of robins built a nest under 

 the eaves, on top of a shutter, and reared two 

 broods. When the second brood was hatched the 

 fall web-worms had begun to hang their horrid nests 

 up in the slender limb-tips of an elm and a birch near 

 by, beyond the reach of any ladder. Day after 

 day we could see the parent robins flying to these 

 nests and returning with food for their hungry 

 brood. Three wren-houses (one of them, at first 

 unoccupied, was finally rented by means of a "To 

 Let" sign!) were sometimes the homes of two 

 broods a season, and the cheerful little tenants not 

 only delighted us all day with their chatter, but 

 could be seen constantly flying into the hole with 

 bugs, caterpillars, grasshoppers, cutworms, and the 

 like for their crowded nestful of squeaking, hungry 

 young. A family of young wrens keeps the parents 

 extremely busy hunting pests. Over my summer- 

 house climbed several Virginia creepers, and usually 

 a pair of chipping-sparrows built in the thickly 



