Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/556

552 tropic bird and the sooty terns from their nests, but was careful in the case of the former to avoid the thrusts of their sharp, stiletto like bills.

To keep within the more familiar species, and nearer at home, on July 18, while fishing a trout-stream, I passed two robin nests in apple trees, each with three eggs, more or less incubated. Note the difference in behavior on the part of their occupants, doubtless due in part to difference in individuality. In passing within a few yards of nest No. 1, the sitter immediately flew out in a great state of excitement, and shot off her characteristic emphatic alarms. At nest No. 2 I could

see the tail of the sitter projecting over the edge of the nest, as I walked under her tree. This was poked with the fishing rod, but with no response. Then I separated her tail-feathers with the tip of the rod, and poked harder. At this the old robin faced about and pecked angrily at the rod, and snapped her bill with the address of a flycatcher. Then I ruffled her already erect crest and back-feathers, only to receive more thrusts and snapping from the bill, and it was only after the roughest kind of treatment that this bird was finally dislodged, so that I could examine her nest.

To give a final illustration of the working of this instinct, on July