io8 BIRD BEHAVIOUR 



Parrots will attempt to feed people for whom they 

 entertain a peculiar regard. One may even see the 

 Robin, solitary and selfish as it usually is, present a 

 worm to its mate, and even among the Cuckoos, 

 proverbial emblems of selfishness, I have seen the 

 male of the Koel XEudynamis honor ata), the com- 

 monest species of India and a fruit-eater, give to 

 the female berries plucked from the bough on 

 which they were both sitting. 



Here the action is the merest courtesy, comparable 

 to our habit of rising to open the door for a lady ; 

 at the opposite- extreme of supplying all the female's 

 necessities is the action of the Hornbills, among 

 which the hen walls herself into the nesting-hole 

 in a tree with a plaster of her own droppings, while 

 the cock feeds her through a slit left in this, envelop- 

 ing his contributions in a gelatinous envelope 

 secreted from the coat of the stomach — its epithelial 

 lining, in fact ; at any rate, such bags of food have 

 been disgorged by Hornbills in captivity and it has 

 been assumed, perhaps too hastily, that the action 

 was normal in nature also. The Hoopoe, an ally 

 of the Hornbills, also assumes the entire responsi- 

 bility of the maintenance of the sitting hen, though 

 he does not encapsule her rations nor does she 

 wall herself into the nest. 



One would naturally suppose that the habit of 

 feeding the female would be generally adopted 

 among birds ; but it is doubtful if this is the case, 

 and there are certainly many exceptions even among 

 groups in which, as in the above instances, the 



