THE FAMILIAR BIRDS 



as ever. It proceeded to creep about over them, 

 every moment or two thrusting up its mouth for 

 food. Will the mother sparrow adopt this bantling, 

 I wonder, and feed it? I had my doubts. The next 

 day I returned and found it still crawling and 

 sprawling about on the backs of its bedfellows, and 

 evidently very hungry. It thrust up its appealing 

 mouth regularly twice each minute during the six 

 minutes I watched it. Evidently it had had no share 

 in the bounty of the nest. Its body had a throbbing 

 movement, like a child with hiccough. I regret now 

 that I did not feed it myself, and continue each 

 day to do so, in order to study further the out- 

 come. I returned the next morning and found the 

 poor thing beneath the heap this time, and quite 

 dead. 



As I proceeded to remove its limp and shrunken 

 body, the young sparrows suddenly took alarm 

 and, with their wing-quills only mere stubs, 

 scrambled out of the nest and struggled off in the 

 grass and weeds. I gathered them together and put 

 them back in the nest, but they would not stay. 

 Out they floundered again as soon as my hand was 

 withdrawn. It is always so; when young birds once 

 leave the nest, the movement is final. It is the word 

 of Fate; they will not be put back. They defile the 

 nest as they leave, and that act is a contemptuous 

 farewell. 



Haste to leave the nest is characteristic of all 



61 



