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BY THE WAYSIDE 
OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE WISCONSIN AND ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETIES 
One Year, 25 Cents Illinois Number One Year, 25 Cents 
Published by the Wisconsin Audubon Society. 
Entered January 27, 1903, at Milwaukee, Wis., as second-class matter, under Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. 
VOL. VI. AUGUST, 1903 No. 4 
A Robin Story. 
Last spring I was interested in a robin who 
built her nest where I could see her every day. 
The robins returned from their winter ab¬ 
sence about the first of March, as they usually 
do, and this particular robin set to work at 
1 once building her nest. Everyone knows that 
it is not usual for robins to begin house- 
making until the uncertain March weather is 
past, and everyone knows that the proper 
place for a robin’s nest is in a tree; but this 
particular robin is an unusual bird. Not only 
1 did she begin nest-building three or four weeks 
before the other robins, but she chose as the 
I place for her nest the upper edge of one of 
I the shutters of my bed room window. 
The window shutters remain open day and 
night, but the edge of one of them is a verv 
narrow support for so large a thing as a 
1 robin’s nest. My robin went diligently to 
work; she carried sticks and rags and bits of 
mud and placed them on the shutter-edge; but 
her task was not an easy one, for when she 
had accumulated a handful of material her 
foundation would give way and the whole 
would tumble down \between the shutter and 
the wall of the house. This occurred again 
and again, but in spite of repeated failure she 
kept at work, and I do not doubt she would 
have persevered until she had filled the space 
behind the shutter with her sticks, had not 
. ’ 
another difficulty arisen. My mother is an 
exemplary housekeeper, and when she found 
what a mess the robin was making—and I 
admit it was a mess—she interfered, removed 
the peck or more of material collected behind 
the shutter, and left the shutter swung out 
from the wall of the house. 
Further building on that shutter was im¬ 
possible, but there are other shutters on the 
house. The robin immediately w^ent to work, 
gathered material, and placed it on the edge 
of another shutter on the other side of the 
house. Her work was dislodged again, and 
•she at once chose another shutter. This strange 
persistence lasted for about three w r eeks; it 
seemed that she waited about with a bill full 
of material until she could find a shutter 
swung back against the house wall, when she 
would begin again as diligently as at first. 
The family had grown quite interested in this 
robin’s unfortunate efforts, and my mother was 
persuaded to let the bird have her own way, 
when we found that she had yielded at last, 
and was building her nest like any ordinary 
robin in a maple tree just opposite my win¬ 
dow and perhaps twenty feet from it. This 
nest was duly completed, and in it our robin 
raised her first brood. Early in June the 
chicks were fledged, and then a second nest was 
built in another maple tree near by. 
I felt satisfied at the time that this robin 
was new to the art of nest-making, else she 
would have acted as other robins do; and I 
was glad that my mother had insisted in dis¬ 
lodging her, because a nest on a shutter would 
have been in constant danger of falling and 
besides—had she been allowed to begin house- 
O 
keeping so early—cold weather hight have de¬ 
stroyed her eggs. 
This year the robins returned at their usual 
time, and since the first of March have been 
abundant. Within a week after their return, 
I found to my surprise and interest that a 
female robin was again at work building a 
nest on my window shutter. The vicissitudes of 
last year were repeated exactly; the bird was 
driven away from one window only to begin 
again at another; and on the twenty-third 
day of the month I saw when I returned home 
in the evening that the robin was at work 
building her nest in the maple tree, in the 
identical crotch where she had placed her 
first nest last year. 
These incidents have given me something 
to think of. In the first place, there seems 
scarcely room for doubt but that this robin 
and the robin of last year are one and the 
same bird. If that be so, consider that she 
left us last November; that she spent the win¬ 
ter—say iu .North Carolina, four or five him- 
