102 CHILDHOOD OF ANIMALS 



marsh birds, such as plovers, curlews, avocets and gulls, all of which 

 lay their eggs on or near the ground, have active young. Rails, 

 divers and grebes, screamers and all the swans, ducks and geese hatch 

 out as lively, downy creatures, able to walk and run, and some of 

 them able to swim from the first. On the other hand, penguins, 

 which lay a single egg and incubate it on the feet, hatch out a 

 blind and naked chick. Gannets and cormorants and petrels, which 

 lay in holes in the rocks or in trees, all the hawks, eagles and owls, 

 kingfishers, swifts and woodpeckers, pigeons, parrots and cuckoos, 

 and all the perching and singing birds, hatch out their young in 

 protected places and in a helpless, frequently naked condition. 



Whether newly hatched birds already possess a covering of feathers 

 or have to wait days or weeks to acquire it, the first plumage is 

 usually very different from that of the adult, and a number of 

 successive suits may have to be put on before the full dress of the 

 adult is reached. The differences are partly in colour and partly in 

 texture. 



Although the first plumage of nestlings is nearly always soft and 

 downy, it seldom corresponds with the down feathers of the adult,but 

 usually with the contour feathers. One of the naturalists on the staff 

 of the British Museum, Mr. W. P. Pycraft, has worked out the nature 

 of the feathers in a great many young birds. He has shown that 

 although a newly hatched owl and hawk are both clad in a soft 

 white downy plumage, the individual feathers composing the covering 

 are different in the two cases. In the owl each down feather occupies 

 the place of a future contour feather, but neither in the embryo nor 

 in the adult are true down feathers ever developed. Each of these 

 first feathers of the owl is shaped like the umbel of a flower, or like 

 the ribs of an umbrella that has been blown inside out, and which has 

 had the stick cut away ; there is no central axis or stem, but the circle 

 of little barbs all arise from the same point. In a very short time 

 this first plumage is moulted off, and replaced by a second set of 

 downy feathers. These still occupy the place of the contour 

 feathers, but they are differently shaped ; each is like a true feather 

 and has a central stem or axis to which the feathery barbs are 

 attached. In late autumn of the first year the second down plumage 

 is moulted, and the contour feathers of the adult take their place. 

 In the brush turkeys, or mound builders, where the eggs are very 

 large, and where the young are hatched in an advanced condition, the 

 first set of down feathers, corresponding with that of the owls, is 

 formed and shed before the chick is hatched, and the second down 



