ete USB OND Lae DelN. 53 
My Robin Friends 
HE Thirteenth is usually considered an unlucky day, but April 
13th proved to be a lucky day for me as a pair of robins chose 
= to build on a small balcony outside my bedroom window. The 
building of the nest was very interesting to watch and was, as far as I 
saw, built entirely by the female bird. First small sticks were brought 
for a foundation, then bits of cloth, coarse grass and strings. On the 16th, 
a rainy Saturday, the nest was plastered with soft mud and shaped. 
The next two days were spent in lining it with soft grasses and on April 
tgth the first egg was laid and one on each succeeding day until four 
bluish green eggs were ready for hatching. 

Photograph by Fred G. Paulus 
During the incubation period the mother would leave the nest 
occasionally for food and on returning would stand on the edge of the 
nest and turn the eggs over with her bill. May 2d the first baby robin 
appeared and by the 4th the four little birds were all out of the shell, 
the mother having carried away the bits of shell leaving the nest clean 
for the little ones. 
The baby robins when first hatched are queer looking yellow feather- 
less creatures with a large mouth that seems to be open most of the 
time. Both of the parent birds feed the little ones, bringing worms 
which they break in small pieces. 
The birds left the nest on the 17th (the first one) and the three others 
on the 19th. I am enclosing a picture of the mother robin. 
R. W. Leacu (Age 12 years) 
Elgin, Illinois 
