THE THRUSH GENUS 387 



daily life at the nest, and the cinematograph has enabled him even 

 to achieve the impossible, and give pictorial expression to continuous 

 movement. Our Thrushes have received their share of his attention, 

 and soon it will be possible in any of our cities, and at any season 

 or hour, to see, on payment of a few pence, a blackbird or a song- 

 thrush go through the whole process of feeding its young. But 

 this sight, however excellent and educative, is a poor imitation of 

 the reality seen at close quarters or through a strong glass. Watch 

 a living thrush alight on the edge of her nest, her beak alive with 

 worms, small and large, the latter in fragments. The first contact 

 of her feet, the brush of her wings, however slight, act like the 

 release of an invisible spring : up from the bottom of the nest there 

 starts an eager cluster of gaping yellow mouths, swaying unsteadily, 

 if the nestlings are still unfeathered, on the end of trembling stalk- 

 like necks. The mother looks at the yellow abysses, and chooses. 

 She does not merely put the worm in, but thrusts it into the gullet, 

 and presses it down. She then withdraws her bill, still well loaded, 

 for only one victim has been detached from the bundle, cocks her 

 head on one side, looks to see if the worm has gone well down ; 

 if it has not, she gives it another shove, and if then it will not, 

 there being no room, she takes it out, and thrusts it down the 

 next abyss. And so on with commendable impartiality until the 

 supply is exhausted, whereupon the quaking cluster sinks, to be- 

 come a confused coil of heads, beaks, necks, limbs, rotundities, 

 and so remains, silent but unsated, until the release is again touched. 

 This scene may recur with variations in detail, some two hundred 

 times in the day, a fact established by Macgillivray's noted corre- 

 spondent Weir, who watched a pair from 2.30 A.M. to 9.30 P.M., 

 both cock and hen working hard, especially in the early morning 

 and evening, to cope with the appetites of a nearly-fledged brood. 

 The food brought consisted not only of worms but of snails and 

 slugs. 1 One wonders how the young can eat their two hundred meals 



1 Macgillivray, History of Birds, vol. ii. 



