BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
75 
birds, and also with those which are in the habit of building deep nests, 
there is considerable difficulty attending such an attemjit. The birds are 
generally obliged to submit to circumstances, and hatch the aliens. 
The food of the young is chiefly collected by the mother-bird, and 
consists of the larvse of beetles, various species of lepidoptera with mature 
forms of the same, spiders, plant-lice, diptera and earthworms. These 
are fed to them for the sf>ace of a fortnight subsequent to their leaving 
the eggs, when they quit for the first time the close precincts of their 
shallow home, to receive their earliest impressions of the outside world, or 
to take some lessons in the secrets of bird-lore. Another week more, and 
they are thrown upon the cold and pitiless world to fight their way as 
others have done before. 
The devotion of the parent to her young is shown not only in the 
assiduity with which she labors to supply them with the essential articles 
of diet, but also in the distress which she manifests when they are in 
23erilous situations, and in her efforts to extricate them from the same. 
Wilson relates a very touching instance of such devotion. Having- 
taken a very young bird from the nest, he carried it to his friend, Mr. 
Bartram. The latter gentleman j)laced it in a cage, which he susjDended 
near a nest containing young Orioles, in hopes that the parents of these 
birds would be moved to feed it. This they failed to do. Its cries, how- 
ever, attracted its own parent, who diligently attended it, and supplied it 
with food for several days. At length she became so solicitous for its 
liberation, as evidenced by repeated cries of entreaty, that Mr. Bartram 
could bear it no longer. He immediately mounted to the cage, took out 
the ca]3tive, and restored it to its parents, who accompanied it to the 
woods with notes of great exultation. 
Early in August the male begins to moult, when, after a little, he 
appears in the greenish livery of the female. In this stage he is not 
distinguishable from her or his young family. Now is the time for de- 
f)arture, and parents and young forsake with many regrets the land where 
