“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.
“That was truly a new sort of scarecrow, and much better than firing off blank cartridges in the nesting season, when other birds might be frightened. However, it proves one thing without a doubt, that cats are the worst enemies that wild birds have to fear, and shows us how careful we should be about turning them out at large, outside of the cities where there are no birds, or keeping more than one under any circumstances.
“What I meant to ask was, do you know what the young Robins do after they leave the nest and the mother bird is perhaps busy with some younger brothers and sisters?
“The father birds choose some tall trees with plenty of leaves, or if evergreens are at hand, they prefer them, and go there in parties of from half a dozen to a hundred every night, leaving the mother birds to tend the nest. When the first brood is able to fly, they go with papa to this roost, where his warning ‘Quick! Quick!’ tells them of dangers they do not yet understand.