yO Wheelock, Regit rgilative Feeditig of Nestlings. Tf^' 



there before. The crops examined showed fish only slightly 

 digested and regurgitative feeding had evidently given place 

 wholly or in part to fresh food. On this day one of the adults 

 brought several fish, possibly four inches long to the nest in dif- 

 ferent journeys. Examinations made on the twenty-first day 

 revealed the same food conditions as the fourteenth. The pile 

 of fish bones and scales was a trifle larger but was partially buried 

 in the earth. There was surprisingly little of this debris in the 

 nest or tunnel but the ground seemed to be saturated with fishy 

 oil. On the twenty-eighth day the young kingfishers resented 

 being examined or photographed, and made good their escape 

 when taken from the nest. 



I am sorry that there is not time to give you records of the 

 Cassin Kingbird, nesting at Pasadena, California, who fed his 

 young by regurgitation for one day ; of a Loggerhead Shrike 

 who impaled each grasshopper on a barbed-wire fence, ate the 

 soft parts, and ten minutes later regurgitated them into the throats 

 of his nestlings ; of the western Gnatcatchers at San Jose, Cali- 

 fornia, who were fearless in coming to the nest while I bent over 

 it and who gave all meals by regurgitation until feathers were well 

 started over the little ones ; of the Sierra Creeper who tucked his 

 nest behind the bark of a dead pine tree and until the nestlings 

 were four days old was never caught carrying visible food to 

 them ; of the Audubon Warblers at Lake Tahoe, California; the 

 Yellow Warblers and American Redstart in Illinois, all of whom 

 fed by this method for the first three days. 



All of my records of the Lark family have been incomplete and 

 are therefore unreliable. 



Among the water birds I have found the Herons, Bitterns and 

 Cormorants feeding by regurgitation in the same violent fashion 

 as the Flickers. There is no record of this method among the 

 game birds, and but few among the birds of prey. The distinc- 

 tion seems to be the condition of the young at hatching. Those 

 species which are covered with down are usually given only fresh 

 food. Although lacking the positive proof of the examination of 

 crops I have reason to believe that the Marsh Hawk is an excep- 

 tion to this rule and regurgitates its food for one day. 



