242 Bruce, A Month 'vitk the Goldjinches. \j^-j 



and there were only four. The youngest child and the sixth tgg 

 had both disappeared, and I decided that in the struggle for 

 existence the older birds must have had too great an advantage 

 in point of time. As it was, the nest seemed hardly large enough, 

 and the four had a comical fashion of lying with their long necks 

 stretched out and their heads hanging over the edge, their eyes 

 half closed and their mouths wide open as if gasping for air. 

 Certainly uglier birdlings never gladdened the hearts of deluded 

 parents. 



For the first week they showed little intelligence. At the noise 

 of a passing wagon four mouths would open as quickly as at the 

 sound of the mother's voice, and they greeted me in the same 

 ravenous manner. I responded by trying to feed them with 

 crushed plantain seed, but though they opened their bills to 

 receive the morsel, the experiment was not very successful. It 

 would take the eye of faith to see in these atoms of birdhood the 

 potential grace and beauty of a mature Goldfinch, and I sometimes 

 fancied that the mother herself had doubts about them, for she 

 would stand pensively on the edge of the nest in her visits to the 

 home tree and look unutterable things. The little birds were 

 fed very slowly and thoroughly about once an hour, sometimes 

 by the father, sometimes by the mother. Possibly the par- 

 ents came oftener during my absence, but from the time the 

 sitting was over I saw them less and less frequently, though I 

 was sometimes greeted on my arrival by a note of inquiry from 

 the tree tops. I hope I proved myself worthy of the confidence 

 placed in me. I did not sit too near the nest, and by moving 

 quietly and speaking softly I tried, in my poor human fashion, to 

 become a fit associate for my gentle friends. Though so seldom 

 fed, the little ones seemed to thrive on fresh air and sunshine. 

 Stretching matches and other gymnastics were practised daily, 

 pretty feathers gradually appeared, and by the time they were ten 

 days old they were bonny birdlings resembling their mother. 

 From her they had inherited gentle manners and soft voices, for 

 it was at that early age that they began to talk. They no longer 

 mistook me for a parent bird, but seemed fond of me, trying to 

 swallow the bits of hard ■ boiled ^^^^^ I offered them, and show- 

 ing no fear when I took them out of the nest. 



When they were nearly two weeks old I visited the orchard 



