an 
YELLOW OR ORANGE CONSPICUOUS 59% 
naked pinky nestlings require all the care of both 
parents. They are beauties, to the eyes of one who 
loves bird babies, being perfect in form although so 
tiny. Their eyes open in a few days, and feathers begin 
to show along each side of the back and on the edges 
of the elbows. In ten days they have begun to look 
charmingly like their devoted mother, with coats of soft 
olive and brown. It is exactly the right color for nest- 
lings, and when they have left the cradle and sit motion- 
less for hours among the green leaves, they are invisible 
to all eyes but those of the parents. 
Like the young of all seed-eating birds, they learn to 
forage for themselves much sooner than do those whose 
food requires skill to catch. Almost as soon as they 
can balance themselves the Goldfinch babies cling to the 
top of a thistle or a bunch of goldenrod, helping them- 
selves to the seed as independently as any of the adults. 
But when father or mother alights near, the little wings 
begin to quiver and the bill opens expectantly, even 
though the little crop be too full to hold more. 
Goldfinch nestlings, like very many others hitherto un- 
suspected, are fed by regurgitation. The adult comes to 
the nest with his crop conspicuously loaded, and soon 
transfers the contents to the empty crops of the young, 
which at once show the change. The food brought is 
thistle seed from which the down has been carefully 
plucked, leaving only the small brown part. When full 
of this the naked crops are distressingly suggestive of a 
flaxseed poultice. 
