Lancaster, Mass.
1902.
May 27
(No 2)
  Last year a Wood Pewee built in a horizontal
fork of a tall elm high above the driveway that leads
past Miss Holman's side door. The nest was robbed
and partly torn from its foundations soon after the
eggs were laid. The birds remained but if they built
a second nest I failed to find it. They were back
again in the old haunt when I came here this
year on May 20th. At least I heard one of them on
that day and saw the pair together on the 23rd.
This morning I saw one of them, presumably the female,
at work on a nest in the same fork where the
nest was built last year. She had already completed
the outer walls and was putting in the lining. While
thus engaged she went through the most violent
contortions, twisting her neck & body and quivering her
wings as she turned around and around in the nest.
  Two of the young Robins left the nest under the
piazza roof yesterday forenoon and the third & last
this forenoon. One of the ladies saw the third bird
go. She says that the mother Robin went to the nest
and soon after left it when the young bird followed
fluttering first into the woodbine that hangs in front
of it and then flying feebly but evenly to the
roof of a neighboring shed. Miss Forster tells me that
the Robin was apparently incubating the eggs on May 1st
and that the nest was examined (by a Mr. Fassett)
on May 16th when it was found to contain three
young apparently only just hatched.
110