202 HABITS OF BIRDS. 



must be destroyed by a pair of these owls during the 

 time they are employed rearing their young*." 



So anxious are the parent birds to provide food 

 for their young, that several of them exhibit, during 

 the breeding season, more omnivorous propensities 

 than at any other. We may indeed occasionally see 

 a chaffinch (Fringilla spiza), or a green-bird (F. 

 chloris), catch a fly or a beetle, but never we believe 

 except when seeds are scarce. On the contrary, in 

 feeding their young, insects constitute probably their 

 sole provision, the seeds upon which the old birds 

 live being too indigestible at least for the unfledged 

 young. In the same way some of the larger birds, 

 which are at all times omnivorous, such as the mag- 

 pie (Pica caudata, RAY), exhibit more carnivorous 

 propensities than usual. Speaking of the magpie, 

 Mr. Knapp says, " When a hatch is effected, the 

 number of young demand a larger quantity of food 

 than is easily obtained, and whole broods of our 

 ducklings, whenever they stray from the yard, are 

 conveyed to the nestf." 



The same delightful writer gives an account of 

 the rearing of a brood of torn-tits, which shows that 

 smaller birds are no less provident with regard to 

 the quantity of food furnished to their young than 

 the eagle or the magpie. " I was lately/' says he, 

 " exceedingly pleased in witnessing the maternal 

 care and intelligence of this bird; for the poor thing 

 had its young ones in the hole of a wall, and the 

 nest had been nearly all drawn out of the crevice by 

 the paw of a cat, arid part of its brood devoured. In 

 revisiting its family, the bird discovered a portion of 

 it remaining, though wrapped up and hidden in the 

 tangled moss and feathers of their bed, and it then 

 drew the whole of the nest back into the place from 



* Cronstedt, quoted by Bingley, ii. 212, 6th edit, 

 t Journal of a Naturalist, p. 183, third edition. 



