36 OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS. 
than they deserve if they had to go hungry sometimes. 
We think they often must get very hungry before they 
have learned to work for their board. This is all right, 
for if the parents kept on supporting them, what use- 
less creatures they would be! 
We shall tell you after a while about our bird’s 
restaurant. We have seen the young birds follow 
their mother to the table at this restaurant and stand 
coaxing for the crumbs. At first the mocking-bird 
mother picks up the food and puts it in the young 
bird’s mouth, and then she flies away. She has given 
it only a little, just to show the little bird where the 
food is and how to pick it up himself. There he will 
stand, looking at the cookie crumbs and teasing as loud 
as he can, but the mother will not come back. She sits 
in a tree near by watching to see how her bird child 
learns his first lesson at helping himself. 
After a while, the young bird gets very hungry and 
begins pecking for the crumbs. At first he makes very 
awkward attempts at grabbing a crumb, but he suc- 
ceeds at last and swallows the rest of his breakfast. 
We laugh, sitting in the shade watching him, and we 
think his mother is langhing too, in the tree above. 
Those birds that do not nurse their young with 
liquid food are supposed to give them water as well as 
food, by bringing it to them in their beaks, though we 
have not seen them do so. Probably the babies are fed 
on soft worms and fruits until they have cut their first 
teeth. 
