242 
Bruce, A Month with the Goldfinches. 
TAuli 
LJuiy 
and there were only four. The youngest child and the sixth egg 
had both disappeared, and I decided that in the struggle for 
existence the older birds must have had too great an advantage 
in point of time. As it was, the nest seemed hardly large enough, 
and the four had a comical fashion of lying with their long necks 
stretched out and their heads hanging over the edge, their eyes 
half closed and their mouths wide open as if gasping for air. 
Certainly uglier birdlings never gladdened the hearts of deluded 
parents. 
For the first week they showed little intelligence. At the noise 
of a passing wagon four mouths would open as quickly as at the 
sound of the mother.’s voice, and they greeted me in the same 
ravenous manner. I responded by trying to feed them with 
crushed plantain seed, but though they opened their bills to 
receive the morsel, the experiment was not very successful. It 
would take the eye of faith to see in these atoms of birdhood the 
potential grace and beauty of a mature Goldfinch, and I sometimes 
fancied that the mother herself had doubts about them, for she 
would stand pensively on the edge of the nest in her visits to the 
home tree and look unutterable things. The little birds were 
fed very slowly and thoroughly about once an hour, sometimes 
by the father, sometimes by the mother. Possibly the par- 
ents came oftener during my absence, but from the time the 
sitting was over I saw them less and less frequently, though I 
was sometimes greeted on my arrival by a note of inquiry from 
the tree tops. I hope I proved myself worthy of the confidence 
placed in me. I did not sit too near the nest, and by moving 
quietly and speaking softly I tried, in my poor human fashion, to 
become a fit associate for my gentle friends. Though so seldom 
fed, the little ones seemed to thrive on fresh air and sunshine. 
Stretching matches and other gymnastics were practised daily, 
pretty feathers gradually appeared, and by the time they were ten 
days old they were bonny birdlings resembling their mother. 
From her they had inherited gentle manners and soft voices, for 
it was at that early age that they began to talk. They no longer 
mistook me for a parent bird, but seemed fond of me, trying to 
swallow the bits of hard boiled egg I offered them, and show- 
ing no fear when I took them out of the nest. 
When they were nearly two weeks old I visited the orchard 
