“Why, Tommy, that is really very good; I didn’t know that any of you children had learned to look so carefully and remember.”
“I saw all that yesterday,” said Tommy, in a state of glee. “There came a flock of bran’-new fresh birds, and sat in the cedar bushes back of the barn, but they didn’t find many berries, because the winter birds have eaten them. Ma gave me some old cake to crumble up, and I put some on the top of the stone fence, and some right on the shed, and this morning when I first looked out, a couple of them were out there eating it, and I got a good square look at them. They liked that cake because it had currants in it.”
“So Tommy is the first to report a ‘bran’-new’ Robin flock,” said Gray Lady. “Now that they have really come, will any of the others tell me what they know about Robins? Begin at Sarah’s end of the table.”
“Robins build mud nests before there are any leaves to hide them, and cats often get them when they are sitting,” said Sarah; “and then by and by, when they build another nest, maybe they’ll put it out on a branch that’s weak, and when it storms and the nest gets wet and heavy, it falls down all of a lump. They seem to get along best when they come under the porch or get in a high up crotch.”
“I like Robins,” said Eliza, who sat next, “because they stay around and let you look at them; but I think that they aren’t very clever birds, for instead of keeping quiet when anything comes near the nest, they holler like everything, so that you can tell just where it is. We had a nest in the grape-vine outside the kitchen window, and you couldn’t believe what those little birds ate in one day. I had the mumps and had to stay inside, so I watched them. They ate all the time, that is, in turn, for the old birds seemed to know just which one had food last. Sometimes, if they had a little worm or a bug, they gave it all to one, but if it was one of those long, rubberneck earthworms, they would twist it and bite pieces off and ram one down each throat.
“My Ma said it made her dreadful tired to see how much those four little birds ate, and that if children were as hungry as that, nobody would have the patience to cook food and raise any. When they grew too big for the nest, they sort of fell out into the vine and stayed in that for a few days, and their father and mother fed them just the same. They couldn’t fly well at first, because their tails were so short that they upset.”
“You watched them quite carefully,” said Gray Lady, “but can you tell me what happened after they were able to fly?”
“Yes, ma’am, they acted real mean. They went right down in the cedar trees beyond the garden to sleep, and every morning before father or my brothers were up they went into the strawberry bed, and even before any were ripe, they bit the red side of the green ones and spoiled them. Father was pretty mad, because our land has run out for onions and we’ve got to raise berries for a few years—all kinds, raspberries, currants, blackberries—to even up.
“Father dassent shoot the Robins, ’cause of the law, and besides, we like ’em real well after berry time, so brother John he made a plan, and it worked splendid. He fixed up a nice little house like a chicken-coop and put it on a stump in the middle of the bed, and then he put our cat in the house. She was comfortable and had good eating and plenty of air, but of course she couldn’t get out, so she just sat there and growled and switched her tail at the birds, and they stayed away.”
Gray Lady laughed heartily at this scheme, which certainly was very ingenious.