4 Owen, A Captive Ileninf Thrush. [^^J" 



I began, early, to experiment with such food as I thought Ukely 

 would have fallen to the lot of the Thrush had it been left to the 

 care of its parents. Thus, July i, I fed to the bird a number of 

 earthworms. For convenience' sake, I cut a few of the biggest 

 worms into two or three pieces, each of which was as large as an 

 ordinary worm. Counting these pieces as whole worms, and this 

 is legitimate, considering their size, the Thrush ate 19 worms 

 between the hours of 8.30 a. m. and i p.m., four hours and a half. 

 This is at the rate of 4 worms per hour, or one worm every fifteen 

 minutes. These figures, again, do not represent the capacity of 

 the bird truthfully because I had not become expert in feeding, 

 and after I had made several unsuccessful efforts to thrust the 

 wriggling object in my fingers down the bird's throat, it often 

 would shut its mouth in disgust and refuse the worm. 



July 3 came the discovery that the Hermit Thrush is fastidious in 

 its diet. At 1.45 on that clay, the bird weighed 25.2 grammes. 

 At the same hour, I weighed out 7.5 grammes of worms taken 

 from a manure heap. In 30 minutes, the bird had eaten four 

 grammes of the worms. If it had continued at the same rate, it 

 would have eaten its own weight in worms in 3.15 hours; but it 

 soon appeared that the bird did not relish the flavor of these 

 dunghill delicacies. It made a great splutter in eating the worms 

 and frequently rejected them with every symptom of nausea and 

 abhorrence, wiping its bill on the nearest object, which was, 

 generally, my hand. So I threw away the remainder of this lot of 

 worms and renewed the experiment with five grammes of worms 

 taken from cool, black, garden mould. These the bird dispatched, 

 with evident relish, in just 30 minutes more. At this rate, it 

 would have eaten its own weight of acceptable worms in about two 

 hours and a half ! My record of later experiments, however, 

 indicates that the Thrush would not prove quite so voracious a 

 songster. Just how long it would take the young bird to eat its 

 own weight in worms, I never accurately ascertained. To know 

 this would, indeed, be interesting, but it would be of small scien- 

 tific value since the conditions of captivity differ widely from those 

 surrounding a bird in the wild state. 



The results of the raw meat and the worm experiments caused 

 me to infer a rapid digestion on the part of the young Thrush. It 



