108 UPLAND AND MEADOW. 



and then both parents, hunt for and carry to the five 

 hungry infants their food. To get an approximate idea 

 of the amount of food required to keep these young 

 birds in growing condition, I timed the movements of 

 a pair. I chose the hours from 10 to 11 a. m., and 2 to 

 3 p. M. In these hours each bird made thirteen trips to 

 and fro, carrying in every case a worm, larva, or large 

 insect — living animal food in every case. The five 

 young birds were supplied, therefore, with food at a 

 rate nearly equal to every other minute ; but, as there 

 were five of them, each bird got a " square meal " at 

 least once in every ten minutes. This feeding was kept 

 up for fully ten hours of each day, tiiere being less ac- 

 tivity in the matter towards evening, when the parent 

 birds were probably taking their own meals; but, at 

 this rate, it is a matter of two hundred and sixty worms 

 a day, or fifty-two for eacli young bird every twenty- 

 four hours. What digestion ! Of course, this must be 

 active, and the fact is evident, as, in every departure 

 from the nest, ejecta are carried away in the beaks of 

 the parent birds, and dropped often at a distance of a 

 hundred yards from the nesting-tree. 



The young birds are twenty-five days old when they 

 leave the nest, and are supposed to shift for themselves. 

 In the meantime each has been supplied with fifty-two 

 worms a day, or thirteen hundred during its life in the 

 nest ; and the five, collectively, have consumed sixty-five 

 hundred worms, larvae, or insects. But there were 

 eleven of these nests, which, therefore, means the de- 

 struction of seventy-one thousand five hundred worms 

 or insects. Again, seven pairs of the colony of twenty- 



