46 THE CROW FAMILY 



peptonised to the babies." Later both perform this function, " but it 

 is most extraordinary to notice how the young accept it from the 

 father without any demonstration, sometimes in complete silence, 

 while every time the mother approaches they lift up their voices in a 

 chorus of jubilation." It would be interesting to know whether the 

 peculiar division of labour here described is characteristic of the 

 species and the family. 1 



Rooks, like all the other Corvidse described in this chapter, carry 

 the grubs, worms, and other food they take to their young packed in 

 the pouch formed by the elastic skin beneath the tongue, which then 

 bulges out like a ball. The same receptacle is also used to conceal 

 stolen goods. The captive Swiss raven, the one that suffered so un- 

 happily from failure of the voice when singing, hid in the same manner 

 all sorts of objects, such as keys, money, and even pins and needles, 

 the latter seeming to cause him no inconvenience. 2 



The young birds, owing perhaps to their impatient desire to 

 greet the coming wire worm, sometimes fall to the ground. There, 

 as a rule, they are left to perish. The mere fact of their disappear- 

 ance from the nest or its immediate vicinity appears to count for 

 nothing. If the young bird is not where the parents expect it to be, 

 then for them it ceases to exist. This is not true only of rooks. I 

 have myself placed a callow little willow-wren on the ground but an 

 inch or two from the base of its nest, and though it wriggled there 

 uncomfortably and conspicuously, the parent bird passed again and 

 again over its head carrying food to the other nestlings without 

 paying it the least attention. An ever-recurring example of the 

 same strange limitation of the maternal instinct is provided by the 

 indifference of the mother birds of many species to their own 

 offspring when ejected from the nest by the alien infant cuckoo. 

 A robin has been watched brooding the little murderer of her young, 



1 Country Life, 1899, May 6 (Ph. Robinson). 



2 Bulletin de la Soci6t6 Ornith. Suisse, i. 2 e partie, p. 21, 1866 (G. Lunel). See also the 

 Zoologist, 1844, p. 633, which gives an example of a jay carrying caterpillars in the pouch 

 preliminary to swallowing them, and Ch. Waterton's Essays in Natural History, 1871, pp. 302-4. 



