Stories of Birds | Page 6

you care for your little ones. I will give you all the crumbs that you can eat."
"Oh! oh!" chirped the robin; "you are very kind, Phyllis, but I hardly think you would know how to feed bird babies.
"You see our babies are so fond of bugs and worms and all sorts of insects, that they do not care for crumbs when they can have nice fat worms.
"We sometimes feed berries and cherries to our babies. We older birds often eat fruit, but really we like worms and bugs better."
"The robins ate all the cherries from the top of our cherry-tree last year," said Phyllis.
"Yes, we did eat some of your cherries," admitted the robin. "They were very sweet and juicy.
"There are people who say that we robins are a nuisance, and that we destroy so much fruit that they wish we would never come near them. The fact is, we do more good than harm to your orchards and berry patches. Just think how many insects we destroy! If it were not for us I think much more fruit would be destroyed by insects. And worms and caterpillars would be crawling everywhere.
"A robin is a very greedy fellow. He eats nearly all the time. I could not begin to tell you how many insects I have eaten during my life.
"There are cutworms, too, which live underground. During the night they come out for food. We robins are early risers, and often catch the slow worms before they can get back to their underground homes."
"Ah," laughed Phyllis, "that must be the reason that we say that the early bird catches the worm."
"When our babies come," said the robin, "we are very busy, indeed. Those young mouths seem always to be open, begging for more food.
"My mother says that when I was a baby robin she was kept busy all day long.
"There were four baby birds in the nest. I myself ate about seventy worms in a day. My brother and sisters had as good appetites as I."
"Will you build here in the apple-tree?" asked Phyllis. "I should so like to watch you. Besides, there is a garden just beneath with millions of bugs and insects there."
"Oh, yes," replied the robin. "We shall surely build there. You will find that robins like to build near your home. We have a very friendly feeling towards people. That is the reason that we hop about your lawn so much and that we waken you by singing near your window in the early morning."
"I have heard that robins are not very good nest-builders," said Phyllis. "I was told that a great number of robins' nests were blown down by every hard storm."
"More are destroyed than I like to think about," said the robin. "But my father and mother raised three families of birds in their nest last season.
"Early in the spring they were very busy about their nest-building. First they brought sticks, straw, weeds, and roots. With these they laid the foundation in what seemed a very careless fashion, among the boughs.
"Then here on this foundation they wove the round nest of straws and weeds. They plastered it with mud. They lined it with soft grasses and moss.
"In this nest my mother laid four beautiful greenish-blue eggs. From the first egg that cracked open I crept out. From the three other eggs came my brother and sisters.
"We were not handsome babies. I don't believe bird babies ever are beautiful at first. We had no feathers, and our mouths were so big and yellow.
"We were always hungry, for we were growing very fast. Our mouths flew open at every little noise. We thought every sound was the flutter of our parents' wings. They always brought such fine food for us."
The robin pecked away at his breakfast for some time before he spoke again. Then he again took up the story of his life.
"How well I remember being taught to fly," he said. "How our mother coaxed us to try our wings. How timid and feeble we were One of my sisters fell to the ground and a great gray cat caught her.
"Our wings were very weak then and our feathers were still short. I then had no beautiful red breast. It was just a rusty looking white spotted with black.
"My mother's breast was not so red as my father's. She was of a paler colour and she sang much less than he. She was a very happy little mother, however, and she chirped very sweetly to her babies.
"After we flew from the nest, and were able to look out for ourselves, my mother laid four more greenish-blue eggs in the same nest. By and bye four more young robins were chirping about in the garden.
"Quite late in the season my parents were again nesting. But it