them quickly out of the way when sudden 

 danger threatens, like fire or flood, from 

 which it is impossible to hide. 



So far as I can judge the process, which 

 is always quickly done and extremely dim- 

 cult to follow, the mother lights or walks 

 directly over the chick and holds him be- 

 tween her knees as she flies. This is the 

 way it seems to me after seeing it several 

 times. There are those and they are hunt- 

 ers and keen observers who claim that 

 the mother carries them in her bill, as a cat 

 carries a kitten; but how that is possible 

 without choking the little fellows is to me 

 incomprehensible. The bill is not strong 

 enough at the tip, I think, to hold them by a 

 wing; and to grasp them by the neck, as in 

 a pair of shears, and so to carry them, would, 

 it seems to me, most certainly suffocate or 

 injure them in any prolonged flight; and 

 that is not the way in which wild mothers 

 generally handle their little ones. 



There is another possible way in which 

 Whitooweek may carry her young, though I 

 have never seen it. An old hunter and keen 



