134 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 



was half sunlight, half shadow, and it was the home of thou- 

 sands of spiders. The wrens had discovered the insects long 

 before, for it was from the direction of the wall that the male 

 bore spiders to his sitting mate. I have seen it stated in 

 the books that the wrens feed their young about thirty times 

 an hour. My lamp-post wrens made a much better average 

 than that. I learned from my host of the inn that the wrens 

 had built on the lamp-post top for three years. I trust that 

 the same pair will make music and kill spiders at the same old 

 stand for years to come. 



This question of the feeding of the young wrens brings to 

 mind the fact that in many bird households some of the young 

 grow much faster than the others. This has been accounted 

 for on the ground that the bigger youngsters receive the 

 greater share of the food, either through the possible favorit- 

 ism of the parents or because the adult birds are unable to 

 remember which of the offspring they fed last. It is my 

 belief, based, however, upon only two observations, that the 

 old birds feed the young ones impartially and in turn. In 

 many human families some of the boys and girls are sturdier 

 than their brothers and sisters. In these human families it 

 will be found generally that the weaker ones get the more 

 attention and the better care. There are reasons, doutbless, 

 for individual cases of slow growth and feeble constitutions in 

 bird families as well as in the families of the humankind. I 

 once saw the fledgeling members of a wood pewee household 

 ranged side by side on the dead limb of a tree growing out of 

 the depths of a ravine. A bridge spanned the ravine from 

 bank to bank and ran close to the treetop upon which the 

 young flycatchers were perched. One of the parent birds sat 

 on the limb at the head of the family line. Every minute or two 



