TINY CRATERS 257 



a little piping twitter. Suddenly, with a few 

 louder, more excited tweets, they stretch out 

 both their heads, and their two widely-opened 

 mouths look like little perfectly round craters, 

 as the dam flies up and pops her head — as it 

 were — as far as it will go, right into one of 

 them. Almost instantly she is away again. Still, 

 from what I have seen before, and from never catch- 

 ing anything projecting from the parent's beak, I 

 think the food must have been brought up from the 

 crop, or at least from somewhere inside — for I am 

 not writing as a physiologist. The first case which 

 I have recorded should, I think, be conclusive, 

 and it was very carefully observed. There have 

 just been two visits in such quick succession 

 that I think it must have been the two parents. 

 No doubt they both feed the young, but it is 

 not so easy to actually see that they do. One of 

 them flies in again, now, plunging its bill instantly 

 right into the centre of the open mouth of the chick. 

 Withdrawing it, almost at once, nothing is seen in 

 the chick's mouth, though it is evident it has swal- 

 lowed something. In another visit, a few minutes 

 afterwards, the finger-in-a-finger-stall appearance 

 of the parent's and chick's bills, and the motions 

 of the latter, as though sucking in something, are 

 much more apparent. 



" Whether the dam always, or only sometimes, 

 disgorges food that it has swallowed, or partially 

 swallowed, or, at least, that it has brought inside 

 the mouth, I cannot be sure ; but I believe that 

 the insects on which the young are fed, are never 

 just carried in the beak, in the way that a thrush. 



