THE FINCHES 123 



place, roughly speaking, in about a fortnight (in the case of the gold- 

 finch it was observed by Miss Bruce on the sixteenth day), and is of 

 an impromptu nature. The young bird scrambles on to the edge of 

 the nest, balances itself for a little, and then flies off, sometimes out 

 of its own and into a neighbouring tree. Or it will crawl out and 

 try flying afterwards, but in no case do the parents appear to teach 

 that is to say, assist it to fly. Their method seems rather to be, if 

 the chicks are old enough, to leave them to the spur of hunger, so 

 that an unduly timid one may be left for some time without a meal. 

 If this, however, does not bring him out, one or both parents will 

 return, when the encouragement of their presence, with his own 

 eagerness for food, is generally sufficient to do so. 



That the young do not all fly together seems prima facie to be 

 evidence that the incubation of all the eggs does not always begin at 

 exactly the same time. In the case of the goldfinch, Miss Bruce 

 writes as follows : " When I first looked into the nest there were six 

 eggs, but my little girl friend had told me that there were but two 

 eggs laid when the bird began to sit, and I was curious to know 

 whether there would not be a marked difference in the age of the 

 young ones. After two weeks' patient waiting, the little mother and 

 I were rewarded by finding among the pretty eggs a very ugly bird- 

 ling. On my afternoon visit there were three little birds, the next 

 day four, and on the day following, I counted five heads " l (the sixth 

 egg was not hatched). Between the fifth and the first young one, 

 therefore, there would have been some two days' difference, and in so 

 short an infancy not days merely but hours ought to count. This 

 appears to me to be a more probable explanation of the fact in 

 question than difference in disposition, though, to be sure, in birds' 

 nests, as in other family residences, all are not alike. A restless, 

 unsatisfied feeling seems to precede the exodus, early associations 



1 The Auk, vol. xv. pp. 239-43. Naumann says that the female crossbill also begins incu- 

 bating at once as soon as she has laid her first egg. On the other hand, the female twite of 

 the pair watched by Saxby waited till she had laid all hers. It would appear, therefore, that 

 there is no invariable rule. 



