The Sea-birds’ Nursery 
time are quite helpless. It is true they 
have a nest, such as it is, in which to 
spend their early days. But it is not 
what we should consider at all a comfort- 
able home. It is merely a huge pile of 
seaweed and great stalks thrown upon 
the beach, placed on some rocky height. 
On the top of this pile, which soon 
becomes very foul and filthy, and stinks 
most abominably, the birds lay their four 
or five chalky white eggs, presently to 
be hatched into young cormorants. The 
feeding of these young ones is a funny 
performance, for when the parents return 
with food, they open their capacious 
hooked beak, and the young birds, one 
by one, thrust themselves into it and help 
themselves to the half-digested food con- 
tained in the pouch. In their eagerness 
they look as if they were doing their 
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