CHAPTER. xX Xe. 
HOW SOME BABY BIRDS ARE FED. 
Iv is well known that among the precocial birds 
strictly there is no carrying of food by the parent 
directly to the young, but the latter are led and 
sometimes carried to places of plenty and allowed to 
help themselves. Often the mother will capture food 
for them, or partially chew it or break it up and 
seratch it out, but only in a few cases does she put it 
directly into their mouths. 
When the precocial nestling is hatched it has not 
used up, as we have noted, all the yolk of the egg 
which is its food before coming forth, but a portion 
of it is drawn directly within its body, and furnishes 
it nourishment till it is strong enough “to pick up a 
living”; but the naked, helpless altricial nestling 
uses all its yolk up, and must be fed at once or 
perish. 
It is a peculiarity of many of the low birds that 
feed the helpless young in the nest that. they regur- 
gitate (or throw up) the contents of their own crops 
or stomachs directly into the mouths of their young. 
This is especially true of the fish eaters, the cor- 
morant, it is said, being able to digest off the skin 
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