308 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



approaching the nest, with it, would make a little 

 "peep, peeping" note, on which two or three little 

 red bills would be thrust out from under the 

 mother's wings, followed by their respective heads 

 and bodies, as all, or some, of them came scrambling 

 down. The instant the weed had been given them, 

 they all scrambled up again, to disappear entirely 

 under the little tent of the wings. As this took 

 place, on an average, every minute and a half, and 

 often much more quickly, the animation and charm 

 of the scene may be imagined. The male showed 

 the greatest eagerness in performing this prime 

 duty, and if ever he was unable, as sometimes 

 happened, to reach any of the chicks over the 

 rounded bastion of the nest, he would get quite 

 excited, and make little darts up at it, stretching to 

 the utmost, and uttering his little " peep, peep." 

 If this proved unsuccessful, he would go anxiously 

 round to another side of the nest, and feed them 

 from there. At other times the chicks were fed 

 in the water, on which the weed was sometimes 

 dropped for them, the parent having first helped 

 to soften it as it seemed to me by biting it about 

 in the end of his bill. Sometimes, too, the weed 

 was laid on the edge of the nest, but, as a rule, the 

 chick received it from the tip of the parent's beak. 

 As I say, I never saw more than the three chicks, 

 and if the fourth was hatched, the birds must have 

 left the nest immediately afterwards, as is, I believe, 

 their custom. Of the three, two would generally 

 sit together, under the one wing of the mother, the 

 third being under the other, from which one may 

 be sure that she carries all four of them, two 



