Home Life of the Brown Thrasher. 83 



found, to our surprise, that it was the male who commenced 

 brooding- for the night ; but whether the female took his place 

 part of the time was not determined. Neither were we able 

 to determine which bird left the nest as we approached in the 

 morning. 



From this somewhat meager data on brooding, it would 

 seem that at the age of six days, at least, the old birds brooded 

 only during the heat of the day. Brooding as a protection 

 from the heat practically ceased on the seventh and eighth day. 

 Brooding at night and as a protection from the rain continued 

 until the young left the nest. 



Feeding the Young. 



The principal object of these observations was to obtain 

 data in regard to the character and amount of food the young 

 received from the parents, and in this we were fairly suc- 

 cessful. Besides this, much other data was secured relative 

 to the manner of feeding. Table II will show the number of 

 times each day that the parent birds brought food to the young 

 during the time they were under observation. 



TABLE II. 



Sbowing the number of visits by each parent bird. 



Date. Time. By Male. By Female. Total. 



June 23—12 :45 P. M.-G :00 P. M 26 32 58 



June 24—12 :50 P. M.-5 :55 P. M 27 41 68 



June 26—12 :55 P. M.-8 :40 P. M 47 59 106 



June 27— 3 :30 A. M.-9 :00 P. M 98 186 286 * 



June 28— 3 :30 A. M.-8 :42 P. M 90 142 232 



June 29— 4 :15 A. M.-8 :10 A. M 4 21 25 



Total times fed 292 481 775 



From this table it will be seen that the female was much 

 more active than the male in procuring food. The data given 



* Twice On the 27th the young were fed without the sex of the 

 parent feeding being determined. 



