Nest Building. 



BY HON. JOHN N. CLARK, SAYBROOK, CONN. j 



^ I have observed that in the case of most birds ' 

 the nest is fashioned after a stereotyped pat- 

 tern. The R obin builds her mud walls just 

 about so thick and so high, so deep and so 

 wide, and just about so much of that soft brown 

 grass is platted together as lining. 



Last year a llobin's nest containing eggs was brought to 

 me by one of my cousins. He found it in his hop yard, in 

 a slight depression of the ground and about a foot from a 

 hop pole. This spring my attention was called to another 

 Robin's nest, with eggs, on the ground at the foot of a 

 small apple tree. I have heard of two others on the ground 

 this year, but did not see them.— D. D. Stone. 



0.& O. XI. Nov. laSQ. p. //(^ 



Notes- Eggs of Thrushes & Thrashers. 

 H.G.Parker. 



American Kobin {Meruta migmtoria). I'he 

 number of eggs laid is generally four, though 

 the writer has been especially fortunate once, 

 in finding sets of five and six. Whether these 

 extreme sets were deposited by one female 

 each, it is impossible to say. Such cases are 

 exceptional and establish nothing. The eggs i 

 are greenish blue, normally unspotted ; in size 

 averaging 1.18x.81. During the season just 

 passed (1886) every Kobin's nest encountered 

 was looked into, in the hope, maybe, of finding 

 those spotted eggs of which we occasionally 

 hear. This peculiar phase was not met with, 

 but it is a fact worthy of mention that in only 

 j one instance, in probably fifty, was more than 

 1 three eggs seen. The writer's experience in 

 this respect was not unique, and conversation 

 with a number of observers confirms this 

 strange phenomena. A long set average 1.25 x 

 .80; a short set average 1.05 x .86. 



O.&O. XII. May. 1887 p. 70 



A Robin's Nest without Mud,— In the Summer of 1900 or 1901 1 noted 

 a Robin on Boston Common building a nest on a linden. No mud was 

 then accessible anywhere on the Common and the Robin had apparently 

 put no mud into this nest. It appeared to be built wholly of the dry 

 trash used by English Sparrows in nest-building. It was some 25 feet 

 up from the ground and could not be closely examined but from all points 

 of view, in bulk and shapelessness as well as in material, it presented the 

 appearance of an English Sparrow's nest of average or a trifle less than 

 average size. If I had not watched the Robin in building it I should have 

 called it an English Sparrow's nest, without hesitation. When first seen, 

 the nest was nearly finished. — Fletcher Osqqdp, Chelsea, Mass. 



