Bird - Lore 



do not eat very much at a time but their digestion is so rapid that their parents 

 feed them almost continuously from daylight until dark and, as Mr. Forbush 

 says, they eat the equivalent of at least eight full meals each day. If one 

 wishes to be duly impressed by the amount of food required by a young bird, 

 he should put up an observation blind by a nest of young birds of almost any 

 species. Quite naturally they do not require as much food when the young are 

 newly hatched as when they are ready to leave the nest. Birds that feed by 

 regurgitation and those which bring back large pieces of food naturally do not 



feed as often as those which 

 make the trips to the nest 

 with only their bills full. Hawks 

 usually feed only about once 

 an hour; Hummingbirds, once 

 in twenty minutes; but a pair 

 of Chickadees that I watched 

 at their nest last summer made 

 35 trips to the nest in 30 min- 

 utes. A pair of Rose-breasted 

 Grosbeaks are recorded as 

 feeding their young 426 times 

 in II hours, and a House 

 Wren, 1,217 times in the 15 

 hours and 45 minutes of day- 

 light. 



When the young are small, 

 until they have developed 

 their coating of feathers, they 

 require frequent brooding by 

 the old bird to keep them 

 from getting cold and likewise 

 to keep them from getting too 

 hot if the nest is exposed to 

 the sun. Altricial young are never brooded after they leave the nest 

 but precocial young are brooded for five or six weeks (or until they grow 

 their juvenal feathers), wherever it strikes the fancy of the old bird, though 

 seldom in the nest which they have left. A pair of Canada Geese, however, 

 that I had in captivity, took their goslings each night back to the old nest 

 to be brooded, though it was not much more than a- depression in the ground. 

 Florida Gallinules, and doubtless other marsh-birds, as well, often make new 

 nests or rafts of rushes on which to brood their young. Wood Ducks, Grebes, 

 and Swans often take their young on their backs and brood them beneath 

 their wings. Indeed the Grebes often take this method of conveying their 

 young to safety, closing their wings down tight upon them and diving with 



A FEMALE CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER BROODING 



Young birds must be protected from heat and from cold 



