44 USEFUL BIRDS. 
The Amount of Food required by Young Birds. 
It seems necessary to the health and comfort of the nest- 
ling bird that its stomach be filled with food during most 
of the day. Nearly half a century ago Prof. D. Treadwell 
called attention to the great 
food requirements of the 
young Robin. Two young 
birds from the nest were 
selected for his experiment. 
One soon died of starvation, 
as the supply of food given 
then at first was much too 
small. The food of the re- 
maining bird was gradually 
Fig. 21.— A young Woodcock, ready to jncreased from day to day, 
leave the nest. ks - 
until on the seventh day it 
was given thirty-one angleworms; but there was no increase 
in its weight until, on the fourteenth day, it received sixty- 
eight worms, weighing, all told, thirty-four pennyweights.1 
Later the same bird ate 
nearly one-half its own 
weight of beef in a day. 
A young man eating at 
this rate would consume 
about seventy pounds of 
beefsteak daily. The 
Robin even when full 
grown required one-third 
of its weight of beef 
daily. 
Mr. Charles W. Nash fed a young Robin from fifty to 
seventy cutworms and earthworms a day for fifteen days. 
While experimenting to see how many cutworms the bird 
would eat in a day, he fed it five and one-half ounces of this 
food, or one hundred and sixty-five cutworms. As the 
Robin weighed but three ounces in the morning, it must 
ith We 
Fig. 22.— Young Robins, in the nest. 
1 The Food of Young Robins, by D. Treadwell. Proceedings of the Boston 
Society of Natural History, Vol. VI, pp. 396-399. 
