116 MY GROWING GARDEN 



sidered this place home for a long time are quite 

 able to hold their own against the glossy black 

 noise-makers. The robins are extraordinarily tame, 

 and build nests where they oughtn't to. One was 

 in a corner of the rose-arbor, within easy reach, 

 and where Mrs. Robin felt it at first necessary 

 to get off her eggs and address remarks to me 

 every time I walked through the arbor. She 

 accepted me as part of the scenery, after a while, 

 but flew and scolded for others. Another, even 

 more daringly arranged her egg-home inside the 

 big Climbing American Beauty rose, right at the 

 sun-dial center of garden traflBc, and she surely 

 had an abundance of exercise while incubating, as 

 visitors passed within three feet ! Yet another con- 

 cluded that the one suitable place for her family- 

 rearing work was the branch of a Norway spruce 

 overhanging the walk to the kitchen door along 

 which passed the butcher, the baker, the ice-man 

 and other service visitors. But, somehow, in 

 God's bird providence, they all pulled through. 



It is my good wife who is bird-wise, not I. She 

 notes the first golden flash of the oriole, and sees 

 the brown creeper and the nuthatch chase up and 

 down the tree trunks. To my duller eyes she 

 showed the brown thrasher, on his first melodious 

 visit; but I didn't need her help to hear the flicker 



