Further Observations on Young Birds. 85 



Mr. F. A. Knight well describes this mode of behaviour 

 in the pheasant chick. He tells * how an old bird, seen 

 on Exmoor, "silently emerging from the tangle of the 

 hedge, stalks across the path with slow and stately pose, 

 moving her head jauntily, as if with the conscious pride 

 of motherhood. A yard behind her follow in single file 

 the little members of her family, struggling manfully 

 through the jungle by the hedgerow. Two of them have 

 just got clear tiny, fluffy balls of down, not many days 

 out of the shell when the old bird, suddenly aware of 

 danger, utters two sharp notes of warning. Instantly the 

 two small figures are still, as if they were turned to stone. 

 They do not even move so much as to crouch down in the 

 grass. One of them had just turned its head perhaps to 

 look for its companions and so it stands, motionless. A 

 new-comer would have little chance of making out the tiny 

 forms among the stones and herbage of the bank. We 

 pass within a yard of them, and still they make no sign. 

 Meanwhile the old bird has vanished through the opposite 

 hedge, and, when the danger has passed, will rejoin her 

 little charges." 



The effect of a sudden startling noise on moorhen 

 chicks is different. It seems to make them run away to 

 some corner. I was observing one day some little plovers 

 and a young moorhen, all about a week old, when the door 

 slammed. The effect was curiously different. The plovers 

 dropped where they stood ; the moorhen chick started so 

 violently, and began to run with such vigour, that he 

 toppled over and lay struggling on the floor. A day or 

 two before, the moorhens and plovers were placed together 

 in the same enclosure for the first time. The former, 

 which were five days old, at once gave the danger or alarm 

 note. One ran away; another showed fight and pecked 



* " By Moorland and Sea," p. 168. 



