20

1916

(Robin) and old birds brooding egg or young in the nest were
no longer often disturbed in any way all the Owls and nearly
all the Squirrels having then disappeared. As far as I was able
to judge by less close observation the woodland-frequenting Robins
reared no young whatever, yet continued to the last in their
Crow and Jay infested haunts where practically all their eggs
were doubtless destroyed about as soon as laid.
  On April 30 [April 30, 1916] an immature female Robin, in exceptionally poor,
faded plumage began fluttering long and persistently at one
or another of four windows at the rear of our farm house, on
its ground floor. She continued this practice almost daily,
sometimes for two or three hours at a time, up to May 19 [May 19, 1916]
after which it was not again observed. Sometimes she came in
the early morning, sometimes in late afternoon, not infrequently
at mid-day hours. Always her behaviour was essentially the
same. First alighting on the low scooping branch of a nearby
apple tree she would fly to the window and cling to its bottom
sash or to one of the narrow wooden strips that held in place its
small, old-fashioned panes and then would peck at the glass
and beat against it with low songs for several minutes at
a time, never hard enough to cause any evident physical
injury beyond the loss of a few breast feathers yet so
vigorously and ceaselessly as to become obviously exhausted
towards the close of each period of attack, after which she would
rest a while, with wide-open bill and drooping wings, on a perch
in the apple tree, before undertaking another of these futile
sallies. It seemed possible at first that having just abandoned
a half-finished nest in our wood shed, she might be trying
to enter one of the lower back rooms with some thought of
building there; but whenever the window at which she had