326 LAND BIRDS 



following I did not once see the male enter the nest or 

 bring food to the female. She seemed a careless mother, 

 leaving the eggs nearly every day for several hours at a 

 time. At least once during these absences she had en- 

 joyed a bath, for her feathers seemed quite wet when 

 she came to the tree. After a short preening she slipped 

 inside. I presume this was a daily occurrence. When 

 the nestlings finally broke the shell, it was not necessary 

 to climb to the nest to discover the fact, for the changed 

 behavior of the male told the secret. He was all fussi- 

 ness, and instead of dozing in the sun on an exposed 

 perch, he came every five minutes or so with bugs for 

 those small naked babies. At first he swallowed these 

 and flew almost immediately to feed the young by regur- 

 gitation, but as they grew older he carried raw food to 

 the nest. Often he alighted on the tree near the tiny 

 doorway and by pulling off the wings and legs prepared 

 the soft parts of the insect to be eaten by his nestlings. 

 From the amount of food consumed one would imagine 

 nothing smaller than young owls inhabited the nursery. 

 Twenty-two grasshoppers were taken in less than half an 

 hour, making more than seven apiece. The nestlings 

 being so small, this seems an appalling amount to be 

 crammed into those tiny throats ;- but it evidently agreed 

 with them, for they grew at a surprising pace, and on the 

 sixteenth day they were well prepared for their d^but. 



The first flight was no farther than a sheltering branch 

 of the same tree, and there the plump little fellows sat 

 all one day looking out over the green forest world with 

 wondering baby eyes. On the fourth day, in a lower 



