LEARNING TO FLY 



203 



destroy myriads of young birds every year ; but still more 

 perish through wind and weather. Hunger combines with 

 cold and wet to starve them, for the insect food which 

 predominates in the diet of most nestlings and fledglings 

 is scarce and hard to come by in stormy weather ; and 

 even the most active parents can bring them least to eat just 

 when they need most. 



Young birds, such as partridges and moorhens, which 

 leave the nest almost as soon as they are hatched, are far 

 more alert than the vacuous little thrushes and robins, but 



iV\\\^%>^' 



YOUNG PARTRIDGES 



they have not much more fear of man. We have seen 

 a little dabchick paddle straight across a river to a man 

 standing on the bank, much as a very young lamb will run 

 to a stranger, from the impression that anything alive and 

 moving must be friendly. Besides terrestrial enemies young 

 water-birds are exposed to the greed of pike. Each pair of 

 moorhens probably produces an average of about twenty 

 young in the season ; for they nest from March to August, 

 and in that time bring off two or three broods, and lay from 

 six to thirteen eggs. Yet the moorhen, though an abundant, 

 is not an increasing species ; and the residue over the 

 annual wastage of the adult birds is sacrificed annually to 

 cold weather and predaceous enemies. There is no percep- 



