i2 4 BIRD BEHAVIOUR 



young ducklings being notoriously insubordinate, 

 at any rate to hens, though they will listen to a 

 Duck mother if she calls to them. 



But in spite of their independence, which is 

 greater than that of any young birds other than the 

 Megapodes, the fledging of young Ducks is most 

 curiously slow. They grow and grow, and lose 

 all their chubby infantile prettiness, and get more 

 than half as big as their parents before any feathers 

 come at all ; and even when these do appear on 

 the shoulders first, and then the sides of the breast 

 the wings remain very tiny, out of all proportion 

 to the powerful legs, and do not enlarge and sprout 

 quills till the bird is full-feathered almost every- 

 where else and is nearly full-sized ; this is the 

 stage when the birds are known as flappers. Geese 

 and Swans also develop in exactly the same way. 



Some other water- or marsh-birds show a similar 

 slowness in growing feathers to replace the down, 

 and in the enlargement and quill-growth of the 

 wings ; these are the Rails as any one can see in 

 the case of the young of the common Moorhen 

 and Coot the Cranes and the Grebes. Young 

 Grebes have a special remarkable peculiarity of 

 their own in fledging ; the head-feathering " hangs 

 fire " longest of all the plumage, so that a Grebe 

 may be full- winged and downy-headed at the 

 same time, a very rare case among birds, though a 

 similar one is found among the young of the Cranes. 

 So far as is known, this retarded fledging, like the 

 precocious fledging, runs through the family wher- 



