In a case where a careful record was made it was found that a young bird 

 consumed more than half its own weight in food each day. In another case, 

 during the fifteen days that a brood of young remained in the nest they managed 

 to devour just ten times their weight. These figures I have taken from the 

 notes of a close observer, a man who does not make random statements. 



The young of the Gallinaceous birds : the grouse, sandpipers, plovers, ducks, 

 geese, sw^ans, quail, etc., are born w^ith a complete covering of feathers and 

 are able to run about and procure food for themselves within twenty-four hours 

 of the time of their leaving the nest. In point of fact the mother bird has little 

 to do in comparison with some of her cousins. About her only duties are to 

 scratch the ground, as do the hens with a brood of young, in order to uncover 

 the small insects, and to keep them covered and warm at night. 



The majority of birds, especially among the perchers, are born naked and 

 for at least the first two weeks of their life need constant care and attention and 

 even after they are able to leave the nest they cannot immediately procure food 

 for themselves. I have often seen a little chipping sparrow, a song sparrow or 

 robin being followed about and feeding a young one nearly, if not quite, as large 

 as the old bird itself. In many cases it has seemed to me to be pure laziness on 

 the part of the younger bird that was fully able to feed and care for itself. 



The great majority of nestlings at first receive nothing but partially digested 

 food from the parent's crop which is fed to them by a process known as regurgi- 

 tation. The old bird inserts her bill well down the young one's throat and pumps 

 up a quantity of half-digested food which goes directly to the nestling's stomach 

 with hardly even the efifort of swallowing on its part. This method is used in 

 most cases only until the young is old enough to receive solid food, but occa- 

 sionally some birds continue it, more as a convenience than as a necessity, much 

 longer than this. Of these latter the herons are a good example. With them 

 it is a convenience in enabling them to carry sufficient food from their fishing 

 grounds to their nests which they could not do in their bills alone. I have many 

 times watched the old herons in the act of feeding their young. The old bird 

 seems to be able to regurgitate as much or as little from the mass in her craw as 

 she considers desirable, and so each one of her brood receives its quota in turn. 

 When they grow older the old bird will often disgorge the entire mass into the 

 nest and then the scrambling and fighting of the young to get at it, and the 

 fierce greediness with which they devour it is ludicrous in the extreme. 



The humrning bird is probably the best example of the birds which feed 

 their young by regurgitation not only while they are in the naked state but after 

 they have left the nest and before they are fully able to care for themselves. 

 To one who for the first time sees a humming bird feed its young it is undoubt- 

 edly a most surprising sight and one which leaves them in little in doubt as to 

 whether the attack was one of an enemy or a friend. I have watched the process 

 many times and yet I can never see it repeated without an instinctive fear that 

 the young one will inevitably be impaled and carried of¥ on the javelin-like bill 



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