BIRDS— YOUNG AND OLD. 
05 
throats, seeds, crumbs or caterpillars, as the case might be, the 
young birds looking like innocent balls of flulT. So far as my 
observations go, young chaffinches are the only young birds who 
“ wobble ” from side to side w'hen being fed ; and when begging for 
more they confront their parents with this ridiculous movement. 
A friend, unaccustomed to the ways of birds, called to me to 
look one day, saying, Why, there’s an intoxicated chaffinch ! ” 
The parent birds so far honour me as to leave one of the 
young ones near me sometimes while they make an excursion 
to the nest for a second detachment — anxious moments these ! 
especially if a hawk is about. We often watch their first 
attempts at pecking and swallowing, and notice how weak the 
little necks are. When one remembers that food has hitherto 
been administered from above in the nest, the difficulties of 
picking from the ground are realised. Young chaffinches, 
swallows, martins, sparrows, and many others, are brought out 
for a short airing and then taken back to the nest. We have 
watched a family of martins packing themselves into the nest 
again, little heads peeping anxiously over the edge of the nest in 
anticipation of the next meal ; and we have watched young 
chaffinches being escorted to their nests by the parent birds. 
As for sparrows — one would gladly shut eyes and ears to their 
e.xistence, were that possible ! Our once peaceful garden literally 
swarms with them. The sunshine of last summer seemed to be 
as favourable to their propagation as was the hot summer of 
1893 for wasps, and one shudders at the thought of what future 
years may bring us ! 
Starlings and jackdaws can have no wish to return to their 
dark homes of infancy, when situated, as these so often are, in 
chimneys or in holes in eaves. Last season we listened to the 
crescendo chirps and screams of a family of starlings in a nest 
under the eaves, but did not see the flight into the world. 
Backwards and forwards through the hot days of early June 
flew the parent birds from the pasture land to the nest. Richard 
Jefferies describes it in Meadow Thoughts with a master touch : — 
“ The starlings fly so swiftly and straight that they seem to 
leave a black line along the air. They have a nest in the roof, 
they are to and fro it and the meadow the entire day, from 
dawn till eve.” After the young starlings had flown, we saw no 
more of them about the house. Perhaps they went to some 
happy hunting ground with the old birds. A pair of redstarts 
built in the ivied wall just under the starling’s nest; every time 
the young ones were fed there was a sound as of the ■whirring of 
watch wheels running down. I noticed that both .starlings and 
redstarts waited with caterpillars or grubs in their beaks, as 
though to warm them, or otherwise prepare them before giving 
them to the nestlings. When one observes the green caterpillar 
diet of young chaffinches and redstarts, and notices the numbers 
of snail shells broken up by thrushes, and the constant supply of 
grubs provided for their young by starlings, not to speak of the 
