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Updated: May 9, 2025
A ruthless destroyer, a nest-robbing boy, would have had the whole thing in his pocket days ago.
Whether a nest-robbing boy or a hungry cat was the transgressor, and whether the nestlings were carried off or eaten, or had happily escaped, who can tell? I could only judge by the conduct of the birds themselves, and as they did not appear disturbed, and continued to carry food, it is to be presumed that part, if not all, of the brood was saved from the wreck of their home.
The mink, changing from brown to black, gave up his nest-robbing for honest hunting, undismayed by trap or deadfall; and up in the inlet I could see grassy domes rising above the bronze and gold of the marsh, where Musquash was building thick and high for winter cold and spring floods.
Now I identified that stealthy visitor absolutely, but I shall never name him. I have never heard him accused of nest-robbing, and I shall not make the charge; for I am convinced that the chat had deserted the nest, and that this abstracter of eggs knew it, and simply took the good things the gods threw in his way as would the best of us.
The remark makes a vivid impression on her son and the young Englishman, neither of whom is so old as to have quite outgrown a boyish propensity for nest-robbing. "Sure to have, ma'am," affirms Seagriff, respectfully raising his hand to his forelock; "an' a pity we didn't think of it sooner. We might 'a' hed fresh eggs for breakfast."
A young tree, a mere sapling, not more than eight feet high, close beside the regular farm road, where men, and worse, two nest-robbing boys, passed forty times a day.
A year ago I invited the children of some of the other grades to join our Audubon Class and we had over forty members. We had our meetings on Friday afternoons after school. The class was quite successful and we saw some direct results of its success. Several nest-robbing boys gave up that 'sport' altogether.
It would be interesting to know if jays ever rob jays, or crows plunder crows; or is there honor among thieves even in the feathered tribes? I suspect the jay is often punished by birds which are otherwise innocent of nest-robbing. One season I found a jay's nest in a small cedar on the side of a wooded ridge. It held five eggs, every one of which had been punctured.
These incidents I have given above, it is true, are but drops in the bucket, but the bucket would be more than full if we could get all the facts. Where one man publishes his notes, hundreds, perhaps thousands, say nothing, but go as silently about their nest-robbing as weasels. It is true that the student of ornithology often feels compelled to take bird-life.
Thus are our birds hunted and cut off and all in the name of science; as if science had not long ago finished with these birds. She has weighed and measured, and dissected, and described them, and their nests, and eggs, and placed them in her cabinet; and the interest of science and of humanity now demands that this wholesale nest-robbing cease.
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