Some Habits and Instincts of Young Birds. 39 



field, the whole performed without any possibility of 

 learning or practice, and less than half an hour after the 

 bird had first seen the light of day. On the other hand, 

 two nestling jays, brought to me when they were about ten 

 days old, were quite unable to follow in this way food 

 moved slowly over their heads. They merely gaped for it 

 to be put into their mouths. When they began, after a 

 day or two, to follow an object with the head and eye, 

 the movements were at first jerky. In a week, when I 

 swept the food through a circle a foot in diameter in 

 front of their cage, it was followed smoothly and evenly. 

 It was curious to see the two jays following it thus, their 

 heads moving in unison through a small circle corre- 

 sponding to my wider sweep. Here a certain amount of 

 individual learning and practice, absent in the case of the 

 pheasant, was required. 



Chicks, pheasants, and other birds which are active 

 shortly after birth may be induced to peck by tapping on 

 the ground with the finger-nail, a pencil, or penholder, thus 

 simulating the pecking action of the hen, and may thus be 

 induced to seize objects which they would otherwise leave 

 untouched. Mr. S. E. Peal* states that the Assamese, 

 when they find newly hatched pheasant chicks in the 

 jungle, teach the little ones to peck and pick up food by 

 sharply tapping among the crushed rice and egg on which 

 they feed them, and say that without this many of them 

 would die. Professor Claypole informs me, on the 

 authority of a friend who had practical experience, that 

 young ostriches hatched in the incubator will not pick 

 up food for themselves unless the ground be tapped so 

 as to suggest the action of pecking. But on young 

 moorhens this has no effect, and I could not find much 

 response, if any, in plovers. 



* Nature, April 9, 1895. 



