190 MUTTON BIRDS 



her mate bringing in supplies, she trusted him, 

 and no doubt believed that in some way I was 

 hood-winked by his manoeuvres, and that the 

 secret of the chicks was not in any way betrayed. 

 The sexes differed only in their estimate of the 

 quality of my intelligence, the cock who fed the 

 chicks thinking I was a bigger fool than I looked, 

 and the hen who abstained, believing I looked a 

 bigger fool than I was. 



Perhaps it is not easy to fully appreciate the 

 anguish of the mother, voluntarily debarred by 

 love of the chicks, from love's first charge, the 

 ministering to their needs; and I have some- 

 times thought it may have been this extremity 

 of tenderness and pain, that wrung from her the 

 little stuttering song, the first singing I had ever 

 heard from a female Tit of either breed. She 

 sang, and once again sang, as she passed over 

 them, as if imploring pardon for apparent 

 coldness and neglect, and entreating their love 

 and forgiveness. 



It was on this nest, and immediately after its 

 discovery, that I was furnished with another 

 instance of that obedience, on which the 

 lives of young things depend in the wilds. It 

 happened that, owing to conditions of locality, 

 an unusually long time had been spent in the 

 erection of a rough stage, this unavoidable delay 

 entailing an additionally long deprivation to 

 the nestlings of their food supply. The 

 appetites, moreover, of the young birds must 

 have been whetted to the sharpest edge by the 

 sight of food carried in the parental bills, past 

 them and over them. At last, however, the stage 

 was complete, the camera legs straddled out, the 

 nest in focus, and the cock standing over his 



