120 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS 



little birds proved extremely difficult to feed ; as, for two days their mouths had 

 to be forcibly opened for every mouthful, and had not my host's kind-hearted wife 

 voluntarily assisted in feeding them, I should have been kept a close prisoner 

 during the two or three days of my stay. After the second day the young birds 

 became reconciled to their foster parent and opened their mouths readily enough. 



At first they had hard-boiled egg and moistened breadcrumbs, but after I 

 reached home I gave them the same mixture upon which I had, that year, 

 successfully reared Nightingales, and this they seemed greatly to relish : they 

 were always hungry, yet grew very slowly. At the end of three weeks one of 

 them died, but the other was completely reared ; he was wonderfully tame, and 

 whenever I entered the little greenhouse in which his large cage stood, he would 

 fly down to the door and begin jumping up and down like an excited child, 

 sometimes springing at the wires and bumping his breast against them in his 

 eagerness to get some fly or mealworm which he spied in my hand. 



I used to open the door, put my hand in and he would hop on to it and 

 snatch the insect or larva from between my finger and thumb : he was a pretty 

 little fellow and I grew very fond of him ; but I am afraid, as is often the case 

 with pets, that he was too well fed for his health, for on September and, after 

 completing his autumn moult, he had an apoplectic fit and died. In all probability, 

 had this bird lived for years in captivity, he would never have sung a note ; for 

 I do not at all believe the parent's song heard only for the first eight or nine 

 days of his life, would have been remembered, and I do not think the songs of 

 the Warblers are inherited : they are heard and learnt by imitation either here or 

 during the winter, after migration. 



