182 
The Robin 
when the young Robins desired to leave the nest. Rain could neither 
dampen their desire nor check their plans. At seven o’clock three of them 
were found sitting motionless, a foot or more from the nest, on the limb 
that held it. Each had gathered itself into as small a space as possible, 
and with head drawn close seemed waiting for something to happen. But 
their eyes were bright as they looked out over the vast expanse of the 
lawn before them — that trackless region, to explore which they dared not 
yet trust their strength. The fourth one could not be found. In the 
next two days two others disappeared, after spending some hours of 
happy life on the grass and in the shrubbery. I strongly suspected 
that the Academy’s cat knew where they had gone. 
Knowing that the family would never return to the nest, I removed 
it from the limb, for I wanted to see how the wonderful structure was 
put together. In its building a framework of slender balsam twigs had 
first been used. There were sixty-three of these, 
StrU Nest C °* some of which were as much as a foot in length. 
Intertwined with them were twenty fragments of 
weed-stalks and grass-stems. The yellow-clay cup, which came next 
inside, varied in thickness from a quarter of an inch at the rim to an 
inch at the bottom. Grass worked in with the clay while it was yet soft 
aided in holding it together, and then, last of all, came the smooth, dry 
carpet of fine grass. The whole structure measured eight inches across 
the top ; inside it was three inches in width and one and a half deep. It 
was one of those admirable objects that are made for a purpose, and 
it had served that purpose well. 
It is good to watch the Robins when a touch of autumn is in the 
air and the wanderlust is strong upon them. On rapidly beating wings 
they drive swiftly across the fields, or pause on the topmost spray of a 
roadside tree and look eagerly away to the southward. Their calls are 
sharp and inquisitive. Clearly the unsuppressed excitement of starting 
on a long journey pervades their nature. In a little while they will go. 
Later you may find them in their winter home, feeding on the black- 
gum-trees in a Carolina swamp, the berries of the China-tree in Georgia, 
or the fruit of the cabbage-palmetto in Florida. But their whole nature 
seems to have suffered change. No cheerful notes of song await you, 
no gathering of food from the grass on the lawn, no 
Wildness drinking from the cup on the window-sill, none of 
the confiding intimacies so dear to their friends in the 
North. We see them in flocks, wild and suspicious. 
They grow fat from much eating, and used to be hunted for the 
table. As lately as 1913 I found strings of them offered in the markets 
of Raleigh, North Carolina, and was told that they were worth sixty 
cents a dozen, the highest price I had ever been asked for them. 
Robins in winter sometimes congregate by thousands to roost at a 
favorite spot, and here the hunters would come to take them in the 
