160 HABITS OF BIRDS. 



again in motion. They all betake themselves to 

 the artificial mother at night, and leave it exactly at 

 daybreak, or when a lamp is brought into the place, 

 producing an artificial daybreak, with which, it is 

 worthy of remark, old hens are not affected, but re- 

 main immovable on their roosts. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



FEEDING AND TRAINING OF THE YOUNG. 



BIRDS differ essentially from quadrupeds in their 

 mode of providing food for their young. Among 

 the latter, Providence has furnished the mother 

 with a supply of food for her offspring within her- 

 self till the teeth arrive at sufficient growth for 

 manducation ; and hence even animals of prey do 

 not, for several weeks, bring food to their cubs, but 

 nourish them solely with milk. Birds, on the other 

 hand, have to provide food for their young from the 

 second day after they are hatched. During the first 

 day they have, in general, sufficient nutriment in the 

 last portions of the yolk of the egg, which they 

 have absorbed through the umbilical vessels. 



So anxious are the parent birds to provide food 

 for their young, that several of them exhibit, during 

 the breeding season, more omnivorous propensities 

 than at any other. We may indeed occasionally 

 see a chaffinch (Fringilla spiza] or a green-bird (F. 

 chloris) catch a fly or a beetle, but never, we be- 

 lieve, except when seeds are scarce. On the con- 

 trary, in feeding their young, insects constitute prob- 

 ably their sole provision, the seeds upon which the 

 old birds live being too indigestible at least for the 

 unfledged young. In the same way some of the 



