LIFE AND BEHAVIOR OF THE CUCKOO 
191 
PARENT 
6. Care of young, embracing regular 
recurrent instinctive acts, as fol- 
lows: (a) feeding young; includ- 
ing capture and treatment of prey, 
return to nest, (pause), (call-stim- 
ulus), testing reflex response of 
throat of young, watching for re- 
sponse or swallowing reflex, (pause) ; 
(b) inspection of young and nest ; (c) 
cleaning young and nest; excreta 
eaten before or after removal, or dis- 
posed of in a special manner, be- 
sides incidental or irregularly re- 
current acts, such as brooding, 
shielding or spreading over young, 
whether sitting or erect, bristling, 
puffing, preening, gaping, yawning, 
stretching, guarding and fighting. 
7. Care and 'education of young. 
Guarding, fighting, feeding, and 
luring or enticing the young often 
leading incidentally or indirectly 
to a process of education, as in 
gulls, where the food is regurgitated 
on the ground, and the young get- 
ting it in this way, learn to look to 
the ground as its source. 
TOrNG 
Initial responses of young at moment of 
of hatching, or shortly after, includ- 
ing grasping reflex of feet, eleva- 
tion of head and opening mouth at 
first evoked by a variety of stimuli, 
but gradually limited by associa- 
tion with the nest or with the sight 
or sound of the parent; swallowing 
reflex in response to contact of bill 
of parent with the food inserted by 
bill in the mouth or more com- 
monly in deep part of throat, in 
altricious birds; call-notes, and 
later alarm notes; gaping, yawning, 
stretching, and spreading in response 
to heat, burrowing under feathers 
of old bird or under nest-mate; 
preening and ' combing ' feather- 
tubes, fear and bristling, pecking, 
flapping and flight. Special instincts 
acquired by young of cuckoos and 
cowbirds, and certain precocious 
species which are not fed long at 
the nest. 
Flight, fear; seeking prey; giving call, 
and alarm notes; following, crouch- 
ing, and hiding; performance of 
various acts through imitation. 
8. Fall migration. Singly, or in com- With adults, or independently, 
pany with individuals of the same 
or of different species, to winter 
station. 
The descriptive formula or catalogue given above is a composite, 
but with shght changes will represent the related instincts of 
parent and child as they normally appear in the breeding cycle of 
the typical altricious and of many precocious birds. Normally 
