The Children's Book of Birds Part 2

But hummingbird mothers and flicker mothers have a different way. When they collect the food they swallow it, as if they wanted it for themselves. Then they go to the nest, and jerk it up again in mouthfuls, and feed the nestlings. This is called feeding by "regurgitation," or "throwing up."

The way they give the food is very curious. They push their long beaks into the nestling's throat, and poke the food far down; so the young one does not even have the trouble of swallowing.

This looks as if it must hurt, but the nestling seems to like it, and is always ready for more. The pigeon mother lets the young one poke his beak down her throat, and get the food for himself.

If the food is hard, like corn, birds who feed in this way let it stay in the crop till it is soft and better fitted for tender throats, before they give it out.

It is comical to see a nest full of little birds when the father or mother comes with food. All stretch up and open their big mouths as wide as they can, and if they are old enough, they cry as if they were starving.

Some birds bring food enough for all in the nest, every time they come.

A cedar-bird, feeding wild cherries, brought five of them every time, one for each of the five nestlings. One cherry was held in his mouth, but the other four were down his throat, and had to be jerked up one by one.

Other birds bring only one mouthful at a time, and when there are five or six in the nest, they have to make as many journeys before all are fed.

Some persons who have studied birds think that each nestling is fed in its turn; but they look so much alike, and are so close together, that it is hard to tell, and I am not sure that it is so.

I will tell you a story I have heard about feeding little birds. A child picked up a young goldfinch who had fallen out of the nest. He took him home and put him into the canary's cage, which was hanging on the front porch.

Soon the family heard a great noise among the birds, and went out to see what was the matter. The baby goldfinch had hopped on to a perch in the cage, and seemed to be afraid to come down, though the old birds had brought food for him, and were calling him to take it.

The canary looked on a while, and then all at once he flew to the wires and took the food from the birds outside; then he went back to the perch beside the little one and gave it to him. This he did many times.

The next day another young goldfinch was picked up and put in the cage, and the canary took food from the parents and fed both.

After a few days the old birds came with a third little one, and as all were now old enough to fly, the cage door was opened, and they all flew away.

VI

HIS FIRST SUIT

SOME birds that live on the ground--as I told you--have dresses of down to begin with. These little fellows have no warm nest to stay in, but run around almost as soon as they come out of the egg. Young ducks and geese wear this baby suit for weeks, before they begin to put on their feather coats.

Young birds that spend most of their time in the water, like grebes, and others that live in a cold country, have the down very thick and fine, like heavy underclothes, to keep them dry and warm.

Birds whose home is underground, like the kingfisher, or in the trunk of a tree, like the woodp.e.c.k.e.r, have hardly any down at all. They need no baby clothes in their warm cradles.

Robins and most other song birds have only a little down on them, and very soon the feathers begin to grow.

When the tiny quills push themselves up, they look like little white pins sticking out all over. Each bit of down grows out of a little raised place on the skin that looks like a pimple, and the feather comes out of the same.

[Ill.u.s.tration: YOUNG WOOD THRUSH]

As the feather grows, the bit of down clings to it till it is broken off. Sometimes it holds on till the feather is well out. We can often see down sticking to a young bird's feathers.

The little feathers grow very fast, and before he is ready to fly a young bird is well covered. Birds hatched with their eyes open, and already dressed, who have to run and fly very soon, get their wing feathers early; but birds who live many days in the nest, like robins and bluebirds, do not get theirs till they are nearly grown.

The tail feathers are the last to come to full length, and you will notice that most birds just out of the nest have very dumpy tails.

A bird's first suit of feathers is called his nestling plumage. In some families it is just like the dress of the grown-up birds, but in others it is not at all like that. It is usually worn only a few weeks, for the young one outgrows it, and needs a new and bigger one before winter.

When a bird is fully dressed, his body is entirely covered, and it looks as if the feathers grew close to each other all over him. But it is not so. The feathers grow in patterns, called "feather tracts," with s.p.a.ces of bare skin between them. These bare places do not show, because the feathers lap over each other and cover them.

The pattern of the feather tracts is not the same in all birds. A few birds of the Ostrich family have feathers all over the body.

There is another curious thing about the nestling plumage. You would expect a young bird to look like his father or mother; and some of them do. Many nestlings are dressed exactly like their mothers; and not until they are a year old do the young males get a coat like their father's.

Some of them, indeed, do not have their grown-up suits for two or three years.

Then, again, many young birds have dresses different from both parents.

Young robins have speckled b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and spots on the shoulders, which the old birds have not.

When the father and mother are dressed alike, as the song sparrows are, the young birds generally differ from both of them. When the father and mother are different, like orioles or bluebirds, the young are usually like the mother the first season. In some cases the father, mother, and young are almost exactly alike.

Birds who live on the ground need dresses of dull colors, or they would not be very safe. The ostrich mother, who makes her nest in plain sight on the sand, is dressed in grayish brown. When she sits on the eggs, she lays her long neck flat on the ground before her; then she looks like one of the ant-hills that are common on the plains of Africa, where she lives.

The South American ostrich, or rhea, fluffs out her feathers and looks like a heap of dry gra.s.s. The male ostrich is dressed in showy black and white, and he stays away all day, but takes care of the nest at night, when his striking colors cannot be seen.

VII

HOW HE CHANGES HIS CLOTHES

IT takes a bird weeks to put on a new suit of clothes. He has nothing but his feathers to protect him from cold and wet, and as feathers cannot grow out in a minute, he would be left naked, and suffer, if he lost them all at once. So he changes his dress one or two feathers at a time.

Some day a feather will drop from each wing. If you could look, you would see that new ones had started out in the same place, and pushed the old ones off. When the new ones are pretty well grown another pair will fall out.

If all dropped out at once, besides suffering with cold he would not be able to fly, and he could not get his living, and anybody could catch him. But losing only one from each side at a time, he always has enough to fly with.

It is the same way with his tail feathers. He loses them in pairs, one from each side at the same time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AMERICAN GOLDFINCH]

The soft feathers that cover his body drop out one by one. Thus all the time he is putting on a new suit he still wears part of the old one. In this way he is never left without clothes for a moment.

Most birds put on their new suits just after the young ones are grown up, and before they all start for the South to spend the winter,--that is, with many of our common birds, in August. At that time they are rather shy, and stop singing. If you did not see one now and then, you might think they were all gone.

Sometimes the new fall suit is not at all like the old one. There is the goldfinch, all summer in bright yellow. When he comes out in his new suit in August, it is dull-colored, much like the one his mate wears all the year, and in winter, when goldfinches fly around in little flocks, they look nearly all alike.

In the spring, the male goldfinch comes out again in yellow. He has two suits a year,--a bright yellow one in the spring, and a dull olive-green for the winter. But his new spring dress is not a full suit. The yellow of the body is all fresh, but the black wings are the same the year round.

Some birds have two, different colored dresses in a year; one they get without changing a feather. Suppose they have feathers of black, with gray on the outside edges. All winter the gray shows and the birds seem to have gray coats. But in spring the gray edges wear or fall off, and the black shows, and then they look as if they had come out in new black suits. It is as if you should take off a gray overcoat and show a black coat under it.