CHAPTER XcxXty: 
HOW A BIRD GOES TO BED. 
SieEepPinac follows eating as a necessary conse- 
quence in many animals, and our present topic is not 
so far removed from the last as it might appear. Of 
course, young altricial birds are always abed till they 
can fly, for the nest is not only a typical cradle, but 
many that are built on bough tips or hang suspended 
are literally such. The purpose of their location and 
style of structure was not to rock the nestlings to 
sleep, however, but to provide for them safety by 
putting them where an enemy could not easily get to 
them. Thus must the facts in the case dispose of the 
sentiment. 
But precocial nestlings must go to bed, and “as 
a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing,” so is 
the usual procedure where the parents literally put 
the children to sleep. Later, when too large for this, 
the young crouch on the ground around the parent or 
fly up to roost near her. 
Only a few birds are so social as to sit in the com- 
pact clusters seen in our Bob-whites, where with tails 
inward they all actually touch each other, with a head 
out every way for watching and for easy escape with- 
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