Concord, Mass.
1902.
June 16
  Cloudy, sultry, calm.
  Yesterday afternoon I found a Blue Jay sitting on her
nest which was placed in a fork in the main trunk of a
white oak ten or twelve inches in diameter just below the fork
which was about fifteen feet above ground. The tree stands
by the side of the path which leads from the old to the
new cabin. I had seen both the Jays together in its top
earlier in the day surrounded by a number of excited and
irate little birds. I begin to believe that there is some truth
in the statement (made, originally, by I know not whom)
that predacious animals seeks their victims at some distance
from their own homes. If it be not so in the case of the
Jays, at least, it is hard to understand why this pair of
birds have spared a Robin's nest in the white pine which
grows against the front of our wood shed and a Red-eyed
Vireo's nest suspended among the terminal twigs of a drooping
branch of another small pine directly over the path about
thirty feet beyond the wood shed and scarce fifty feet from
Gilbert's cabin.
   The history of the Robin's nest is interesting. Gilbert found
it on the morning (at about 9 o'clock) of June 1st when it
was completed but empty. When I looked into it at about
5 P.M. the same day it held one egg. It was next examined
(by Gilbert) on the 5th when there were four eggs, the full set.
At about noon of the 15th Gilbert put his hand in the nest
and felt all four eggs. At 7 A.M. to-day (16th) I
examined the nest and found four young birds. This would
make the period of incubation only twelve days for even
had the bird begun sitting when she laid her first egg she could
not have incubated the last more than twelve days unless she had
more than one egg a day which seems highly improbable.
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