blaze of yellow from the marsh marigolds which make masses of succulent
stems and leaves, crowned with pale gold, as far up the marsh as the eye
can reach. In Iowa, it is in May, rather than in June, that "the cowslip
startles the meadows green" and "the buttercup catches the sun in its
chalice." And it is in late April or early May that "the robin is
plastering his house hard by." By the way, ought not the poet to have
made it "her" house? It is the mother bird who seems to do the
plastering. Both birds work on the structure, but it appears to be the
female who carries most of the mud and who uses her faded red apron for a
trowel as she moves round in her nest pushing her breast against the
round wall of the adobe dwelling to spread the mud evenly. The work on
one particular nest was done in late April when there was nothing on the
elm but the seed fringes to screen the builder as she worked. Then the
four light greenish-blue eggs were laid. A red squirrel got one of them
one day. Disregarding the squeakings and scoldings of the anxious
robins, he sat on a limb holding the egg in his forepaws and bit a hole
in one side of it. Then he drained the contents, dropped the shell to the
ground and was about to get another egg when he was driven off.
Apparently he forgot the location of the nest after that, for the other
three eggs hatched out safely.

* * * * *

The air is filled with bird music. It began with the larks, closely
followed by the robins, and then the noise of the crows. No change in the
program since the days of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida when:

_"The busy day
Wak'd by the lark, hath roused the ribald crows."_