NESTLINGS OF FOREST AND MARSH 
while the fierce storm beat pitilessly in her 
face, and it seemed as though cradle, babies, 
and all must go down. As it increased in 
fury, she spread her feathers, sitting even 
more closely, and forming a perfect shelter 
over the edge of the nest as well as over the 
young birds, and I believe not one drop 
reached them. 'After it was over and only 
a light rain falling, she flew off to an adjacent 
branch and shook herself as if from a bath, 
not one whit the worse for her drenching, 
and in ten minutes appeared at the nest with 
three angle-worms in her beak. 
Having read Mr. Treadwell’s estimate 
that each young robin eats sixty-eight earth- 
worms daily, — which would be a propor- 
tion of seventy pounds of meat and six 
gallons of water per day for an average man, 
— I fell to counting the worms brought to 
this nest. The result seemed to justify Mr. 
Treadwell. In three hours after this rain, 
sixty-one earthworms, sixteen yellow grubs, 
and thirty-eight insects of various sorts, 
from grasshoppers to dragon-flies and moths, 
70 
