THE HANGING BIRD 239 



there was nothing to do but wait for the second brood. In 

 the meantime a neighbor, Milo Lemley, succeeded in getting 

 some young birds just as they were ready to leave the 

 nest. Not knowing what to feed them, he put them in a 

 cage and hung the cage in a tree near enough the nest 

 for the parents to find it, yet close enough to the porch for 

 him to watch what the old birds did. In this way he 

 hoped not only to avoid the trouble of feeding his birds but 

 also to learn what they were fed. We often did this with 

 young birds, and in this way found out much we might 

 never have learned otherwise. 



The old birds found their young promptly and fed them 

 readily the first day ; but they also tried in every way they 

 knew to get their young out of the cage. The cage was 

 taken indoors at night, and put out again early the next 

 morning. Again the parents fed their young, but both old 

 and young made even greater efforts to open the prison 

 doors. Finally sometime after noon the parents seemingly 

 decided it was of no use; so they stopped trying to get 

 into the cage, and again went for food for the young. After 

 feeding them this time they flew away and did not again 

 return to the cage. Before night every young bird was 

 dead. It did not seem possible that they had starved, so 

 we felt sure the old birds had poisoned them rather than 

 allow them to languish in prison. Both mother and 

 Milo's father said that these birds will poison their young 

 if they are caged. After that I never tried to catch young 

 orioles, for tho I always gave my pet birds as great free- 

 dom as the wild birds as soon as they had become tame, yet 

 I felt it would be cruel to keep, even for a short time, 

 birds that preferred death to captivity. Others have caged 

 young Baltimore orioles, however, and report that the 



