1150 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 part 2 



led him toward the nearby willow-birch thicket. About 20 feet from 

 the nest he was fed, and thereafter he was given a morsel after every 

 few feet, at intervals of 15 to 30 seconds. Occasionally Green 

 wandered off the course and after considerable peeping by both parties, 

 was finally found and fed. Thus it took them 20 minutes to traverse 

 100 feet of hummocky tundra. At the edge of the thicket the young 

 bird was allowed to rest in the shelter of the hummock. 



This performance was repeated almost identically when twice I 

 brought him back to the nest. Green showed no desire to travel 

 alone, nor to follow the female parent, whose instincts seemed to 

 cling to the nest. Throughout my visit she chipped anxiously about 

 it and fed her offspring several times while he was there. The 

 third time that he was forcibly returned he concealed himseK in the 

 shrubbery directly behind the nest. The female came and did not 

 see him, calmly swallowed the food herself and brooded for 2 minutes 

 on the empty nest. Subsequently the male appeared and Green, 

 now a true fledgling, hopped after him to the shelter of the thicket. 



As has been indicated, young birds were quite unable to fly when 

 they left the nest. The day following the departure from nest I 

 described above, I found Green perched in a small tamarack about 15 

 inches from the ground in the same thicket to which I had followed 

 him the previous afternoon. He was easily captured by hand, and 

 upon his release he stumbled away over the uneven hummocks 

 without trying to fly. Five days later a banded young from this 

 same brood flushed 6 feet in front of me and flew laboriously some 

 30 to 40 feet. The development of caged young again corresponded 

 with observations afield. Within the fenced corral droppings were 

 first found on the branches a few inches above the ground level when 

 the young were 15 days old, and they were thereafter conspicuously 

 more active and quarrelsome. By the end of July young birds 

 everywhere were flying about freely within the little thickets of their 

 territory. 



Fledglings over 2 weeks old, both at the cage and in the field, seemed 

 to be fed as frequently as during their nest life. On July 26, when 

 they were 22 days old, the male made three visits to the enclosure in 

 % hour, although there was but one bird inside and three at large (the 

 others had escaped). It was on this day that the young bird still in 

 the corral gave the first indication of independent feeding. He was 

 observed picking at the ground and was much attracted to a bread 

 crust from my lunchbox. 



Family groups farther afield were observed until August 15, but 

 only occasionally was an adult seen gathering food for the young or 

 feeding them. 



