Page:How to Have Bird Neighbors.pdf/75

 night, because so many birds had nests and helpless little ones on the ground, or in low bushes.

"Mother put me up to that," he said; and added, "we are trying to keep that ravine as a sanctuary for birds, where they and their little ones can be safe."

Another thing that attracted birds to that place was a mulberry tree. Though only two years old, it was bearing fruit and was visited by robins, orioles, thrashers, and redheaded woodpeckers.

The boy had so many kinds of birds never seen near our place that I began to wish I, too, could live on a farm and have so many more of these charming neighbors.

A storm came up. Soon the shallow places in a cornfield near by were turned into puddles. The baby martins that had been lounging on the porch went inside. The old ones came flying home in a hurry. We went to the garden house, which the boy had fitted up as a workshop because he didn't like to deprive his mother any longer of her little storeroom. When it stopped raining the sun came out and the clean earth fairly glistened. A flock of robins came to hunt for worms in the drenched field. Some bathed in the puddles. It was amusing to watch them chase one away if he stayed in long.

As we were enjoying the robins, the boy's mother called out: "Come here, you bird people, and see what has happened." She took us to the living room