FEEDING AND CARE OP THE YOUNG. 65 



The following incident was observed in November, in a pair of young common pigeons 

 that were hatched on Oct. 26 and 27. These birds were about 3 weeks old, not ready 

 to fly. The old birds wanted the nest for a new set of eggs and began to drive the young. 

 These, wonderful to say, bore it for a while and then began to resist, and fought with such 

 desperation that the old ones left them in peace. I saw this fight repeated several times. 



After feeding, the young usually turn so as to sit with the head pointing backward 

 under the parent. This position is the one almost invariably taken by the passenger, 

 ring-dove, crested pigeon, and the domestic dove. 1 (R 17, R 33, R 6, R 7, R 19, C 7/33, 

 Em 7, Sh 8/13.) 



FEEDING OF YOUNG. 



Most people know something of the way the pigeon feeds its young. There are, 

 however, some rather extraordinary things that happen in connection with feeding that 

 deserve mention. Suppose we place the young of a small species under the care of a larger 

 species a young ring-dove, for example, under a common pigeon or homer. The old 

 birds \vill take care of this young ring-dove just as faithfully as they would take care of 

 their own young. But when this young bird gets out of the nest, at a week or 10 days, 

 he is not able to take all the food that the old birds want to get rid of; the homer can 

 not feed this young and small bird as much as he desires to feed it, and we can imagine 

 that this gives the homer a quite unpleasant feeling, for he behaves in a way to indi- 

 cate this. When the young bird does not accept all the food that is offered to him, then 

 the foster-parent begins to tease the young to accept it. The parent will pull the feathers 

 of the young very gently and bite its beak, or give it a gentle pinch, just to stimulate it 

 to feed. The little bird will respond to these things until it has so much that it can hold 

 no more; but the old bird urges it to accept still more. Finally the parent begins to pinch 

 the young bird's beak a little more severely, and to pull its feathers a little more strongly, 

 and being a larger species behaves in a way rather rough for the smaller species, and 

 in the end alarms the young bird, which now tries to get out of the way. The old bird 

 follows it up he can not give up, but is fully determined to get rid of all his food. Nat- 

 urally it troubles and startles the young bird to be pursued in this rough way and the old 

 bird sooner or later gets angry and begins to peck the squealing, retreating young very 

 severely, sometimes pulls out its feathers, sometimes pulls off the skin of its head, neck, 

 and back, and if the young bird is not taken away it is very often killed. 



Now, I am perfectly certain that the old bird behaves in this way, not from any mali- 

 cious motives, but just for its normal relief. There are a great many ways of becoming 

 sure of this fact. This behavior, of course, is found in birds of different species. I have 

 tried some of them in many different ways and found this view of the behavior confirmed 

 by other behavior which is analogous. In further illustrations of this, we may consider a 

 situation which is sometimes met with in the case of a common pigeon and her own young. 

 When one of the two young of a brood is hatched a little too long after the first one, the 

 first hatched is apt to get quite an extra start in growth and be much stronger than the 

 second one; when the second one is hatched, it is fed a "little" and the other one is fed 

 "more," and so from day to day the first one continues to outgrow the second one to such 

 an extent that the second one has not the strength or ability to stand up and get as much 

 of the food as the first one; so the difference increases from day to day. The second bird 

 is more and more hungry, because the old bird is satisfied with the vigorous bearing and 



1 When the bird is sitting the eggs are usually placedjend to end in the median line. They are usually too far 

 back under the abdomen to come into uncomfortable contact with the keel of the breast bone. The young commonly 

 face toward the tail of the sitting parent. It seems as if they can be better covered by the feathers in this position. 

 The parent easily turns round to feed the young. (Conv. 8/6/08, W. C.) 



