106 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS 



curious way of moving when it is a baby is 

 the young dabchick ; as we have seen, the old 

 one carries it about on her back just as a 

 human baby is carried about in the mother's 

 arms, and it is also like a human baby in 

 another way, that is, in crawling on all fours 

 before it can walk. Young dabchicks do not 

 have much walking to do, it is true, as they 

 only come on to the nest when out of the 

 water or off the old one's back ; but when 

 they move about the nest for about the first 

 week of their lives they crawl on all fours, 

 using their little downy wings as front legs, 

 and looking, with their striped coats and 

 pink bills, very like some big queerly coloured 

 beetle. 



A very different bird is also a quadruped 

 when it is young, and in an even more re- 

 markable way. This is the young of the 

 hoatzin, a South American bird which looks 

 something like a crested pheasant ; but its 

 habits are different from a pheasant's, for it 

 hardly ever comes to the ground, and makes 

 a stick nest on the boughs, like a wood- 

 pigeon's. The young hoatzin is also not at 

 all like a young pheasant ; it is nearly naked, 



