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IMPORTANCE OF NEW ZEALAND BIRDS 17 
themselves are often worn out. A little Blue-Tit 
(Parus caeruleus) was known to have made 475 
journeys in seventeen hours. Parrots and gregarious 
birds such as Linnets, Goldfinches, ete., feed their 
young mainly on regurgitated food (usually half- 
digested seeds). 
Cormorants, ete., obtain their meal by inserting 
their heads down their mother’s throat and removing 
the fish in her pouch. Petrels feed their nestlings 
largely on oil, distilled from the fish they eat. Both 
young and old squirt this up when alarmed. Pigeons 
have a milky secretion they give their offspring, 
known as pigeon’s milk. 
Where two or three broods are hatched, the young 
birds help their parents in feeding their more 
helpless relations, but where birds require large 
areas of land on which to thrive, the young are 
driven from the neighbourhood by their parents. 
The Kingfishers and Albatrosses feed their young 
longer than other birds, until in the ease of the 
Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exulans) the chick 
surpasses its parents in weight. At this stage the 
parents abandon it for four months, during which 
time it becomes fully fledged and is chased from the 
nest by the old birds on their return. The whole 
nesting process takes a year. 
In the case of birds of prey, as for example the 
Sparrow-Hawk (Accipiter nisus) the victim is 
brought decapitated to the nest, where the mother 
divides it amongst her nestlings, careful in the early 
days to see that they eat only the pick of the flesh; 
gradually becoming less particular until eventually 
they can tear and eat the whole carcase themselves. 
Nature, in order to aid some birds in feeding their 
young, particularly in the case of birds having dark 
pendulous nests, has arranged that the young have 
peculiar bright colouring in and about the mouth. 
An example of this is found in the nestlings of the 
