40 



BIRD FRIENDS 



from day to day for short periods, with the follow- 

 ing results : 



On July 14 the young birds left the nest 



As shown by the above table, on July 13, when 

 the young were fourteen days old, the birds were 

 watched for four hours at different times of the day, 

 showing an average of nineteen and three fourths 

 feedings per hour. For the day of fifteen hours, this 

 would mean three hundred and three times per day. 

 Taking the average between this and two hundred 

 and thirty-eight, the times the young were fed when 

 two days old, we get two hundred and seventy times 

 as the average number of times the young were fed 

 daily during the period they were in the nest. Mul- 

 tiplying this by fifteen, the number of days the 

 young were in the nest, gives four thousand and 

 fifty as the total number of times the young were fed. 

 As the parent often brought more than one insect 



