Part 2

Eggs are not all alike, of course. One the size of a bean is large enough to hold a hummingbird baby, till it is old enough to come out. But the young ostrich needs a shell nearly as big as your head. So there are all sizes of eggs to fit the different sizes of birds.

If you should break a fresh egg you would not see a bird, for it would not be formed at that time. After the egg is laid in its soft bed, it has to be kept warm for many days, and that is why the mother bird sits on her nest so quietly. She is keeping the eggs warm, so that the little ones will form and grow, till they are as big as the shells can hold.

While the mother is sitting her mate does all he can to help, though each species has its own way. The blue jay brings food to his mate, so that she need not leave the nest at all, and many others do so. But the kingbird father simply watches the nest to protect it while the mother goes for food. A redstart gets into the nest himself, to keep the eggs warm while his mate is gone, and a goldfinch coaxes his mate to go off with him for a lunch, leaving nest and eggs to take care of themselves.

Another thing the father birds do is to sing. This is the time when we hear so much bird song. The singers have little to do but to wait, and so they please themselves, and their mates, and us too, by singing a great deal.

When the little birds begin to be cramped, and find their cradle too tight, they peck at the shell with a sort of tooth that grows on the end of the beak, and is called the "egg tooth." This soon breaks the shell, and they come out. Then the mother or father carefully picks up the pieces of shell, carries them off, and throws them away, leaving only the little ones in the nest. Perhaps you have found these broken shells on the ground sometimes, and could not guess how they came there. When the birdlings break out of their prison they do not all look the same. Ducks and geese and chickens and quails, and other birds who live on the ground, as well as hawks and owls, are dressed in pretty suits of down. They have their eyes open, and the ground birds are ready to run about at once.

A man who studied birds, once saw a young duck get its first suit of down. He picked up the egg just as the little bird inside was trying to get out. In a few minutes the shell fell apart, and out stepped the duckling on his hand. It seemed to be covered with coarse black hairs, which in a moment began to burst open, one by one, and out of each came a soft fluff of down. So in a few minutes, while the man stood there and held him, the little duck was all covered with his pretty dress.

But most birds hatched in nests in trees and bushes, like robins and bluebirds, are very different. When they come out of their shells they are naked, have their eyes shut, and look as if they were nearly all mouth. A young hummingbird looks about as big as a honey bee, and a robin baby not much bigger than the eggshell he came out of.

They lie flat down in the nest, seeming to be asleep most of the time. All they want is to be warm and to be fed.

To keep them warm, the mother sits on them a great part of the time, and for the first few days of their lives, the father often brings most of the food. Sometimes he gives it to the mother, and she feeds the little ones. But sometimes she gets off the nest, and flies away to rest, and get something to eat for herself, while he feeds the nestlings.

There is one bird father who--it is thought--never comes to the nest, either to watch the eggs or to help feed the nestlings. That is our hummingbird, the ruby throat.

We do not know the reason for this, and it is not fair to say hard things about him until we do. It may be that he thinks his shining ruby would show the hiding-place of the nest, or it may be that the little mother is not willing to have any help. I think this last is the real reason, for she has a great deal of spirit, and always drives away others from her feeding-places.

Young birds grow very fast, and soon feathers begin to come out all over them. They are not very pretty at this time.

V

HOW HE IS FED

SOON after the young bird comes out of the egg, he begins to be hungry. All day long, whenever the father or mother comes near, he opens his great mouth as wide as he can, to have it filled, and the moment he gets his voice he cries for food.

Then the old birds have to work hard. Three or four hungry nestlings can keep both father and mother busy from morning till night, hunting for caterpillars and beetles and grubs and other things to feed them. It seems as if the little fellows never could get enough to eat. Each swallow baby wants seven or eight hundred small flies every day, and a baby robin needs more earthworms in a day than you can hold in your hand at once.

At this time you will see robins hunting over the lawn, and carrying great beakfuls of worms up to the nest. Bluebirds you will find looking in the grass, and sparrows hopping about on the ground, all seeking soft worms and grubs and insects for the nestlings; and they are so busy they do not get much time for singing.

At this time the orioles go all over the orchard trees looking for tiny worms, and little warblers seek them under every leaf.

Woodpeckers find the insects hidden behind the bark of trees, by cutting holes through it. Chickadees and nuthatches pick the tiniest insect eggs out of the crevices, and flickers hunt everywhere for ants.

As soon as one of the old birds has his mouth full, he flies to the nest to feed the young.

But not all birds feed in the same way. A robin just drops a big earthworm, or a part of one, into the gaping baby mouth. Many other birds do so also. Sometimes, when an insect is too big or too hard, they beat it till it is soft, or break it up, before giving it to a little one.

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 woodpecker, 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.

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 spaces 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 breasts, 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 grass. 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.

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.

There is another interesting thing about birds' dress. Some of them look like their mates, the father and mother birds so nearly alike that it is hard, sometimes impossible, to tell them apart. But when that is the case, you will notice that the color is not very gay. If the father wears a bright-colored suit, the mother does not look like him.

For this reason the little mother is not too easily seen when she is on her nest. If the goldfinch mother were as bright as her mate, everybody who came near would see her on the nest, and some animal might take her, and leave the young birds to starve to death. That is probably why mother birds dress in such dull colors.

When birds live on the ground, or very near it, in most cases both of the pair wear the dull colors, so they will not easily be seen. Wrens and sparrows and many others are so. But birds who make their nests in holes, or under ground, are often as bright as their mates, because they cannot be seen while sitting, and do not need to wear dull colors.

A curious thing about a bird's color is that the same species, or kind of bird, is darker in one place than another. Where there is much dampness or wet weather, the colors are darker. For instance, a bob-white who lives in Florida, or one who lives in Oregon, will be much darker than his cousin living in New England.

VIII

HIS FIRST FLIGHT

WHEN young birds are in the nest they are not very pretty. But when they are nearly feathered, and sit up on the edge, exercising their wings, and getting ready to fly, they are lovely to look at. Their feathers are more fluffy and fresh than those of the old birds.

At that time they have not learned to be afraid of us, and if we do not frighten them by roughness, loud talking, or quick movements, we can often get near enough to see them well. They will sit up and look at us without fear.

Then some day, all at once, a young bird will begin to flap his wings, and off he will go, fluttering very hard, beating his wings, and trying to reach the next tree.

Sometimes he will reach it, and perch on a twig, and sit quite still a long time, tired with his first flight. Then the parents will come and feed him, and after a while he will fly again. This time he will go farther.

So he will go on, till in a few days he can fly very well, and follow his parents about, and begin to learn where to get food.

Sometimes when a young bird leaves the nest he does not reach the tree he starts for, but falls to the ground. Then there is trouble among the birds. He is in danger of being picked up by a cat or a boy, or of getting tangled in the grass or weeds.

The poor parents are half wild with fear. They coax him to try again, and they follow him about in the grass, in great distress. I have many times picked up a little bird, and set him on a branch of a tree, or stood guard over him, driving away cats and keeping off people, till he reached a place where he would be safe.

When young birds are out, but cannot yet fly very well, there is much anxiety about them. Then, if any one comes around to disturb them, what can the poor little mother do? Sometimes she makes her young ones hide. Some of the birds who live on the ground will give a certain cry, when in a second every little one will crouch on the ground, or creep under a leaf, and be perfectly still. And their dark colors look so like the earth one can hardly see them.

Then the mother tries to make one look at her by queer antics. She pretends to be hurt, and tumbles about as if she could not fly. If it is a man or an animal who has frightened her, he will usually think he can easily catch her; so he will forget about the young ones, and follow her as she goes fluttering over the ground. She will go on playing that she is hurt, and moving away, till she leads him far from her brood. Then she will start up and fly away, and he cannot find his way back to where the little ones are still crouching.

Sometimes when a mother is frightened, she will snatch up her young one between her feet, and fly away with it. Sometimes a mother will fight, actually fly into the face of the one she fears. Often, too, other birds come to her aid; birds of many kinds,--catbirds, robins, thrashers, and others,--all come to help her drive away the enemy, for birds are almost always ready to help each other.

I once found a young blue jay who had come to the ground while trying his first flight. I thought I would pick him up and put him on a branch. But the old birds did not know what I meant to do, and perhaps they were afraid I would carry him off.

They flew at me with loud cries to drive me away, and I thought it best to go, for I did not want to make them any more unhappy than they were already.

I did not go far, because I wanted to see that no one caught the little one. He hopped about in the grass a long time, while his parents flew around him in great distress. Many times he tried to fly, but he could not rise more than two feet from the ground.

At last he seemed to make up his mind to climb a tree, for when he came to one with a rough bark he began to go up. He would fly up a few inches, then hold on with his claws to rest. And so, half flying and half climbing, he went on till he reached the lowest limb. On that he perched and was quiet, glad to rest after his hard work. The old birds were happy, too, and brought food to him, and so I left them.

IX

HIS EDUCATION

THE young bird has to be educated, or trained for his life, just as we do, though not exactly in the same way.

He does not have to know arithmetic and history; and what he needs of geography is only the road to the South, where he spends his winters.

I suppose the first thing he learns is to fly. You have heard, perhaps, that the old birds drive their young out of the nest. But do not believe any such thing, for it is not true. I have seen many little birds leave the nest, and almost every one flew when the parents were away after food.

The parents sometimes try to coax a nestling who is afraid to try his wings, like an oriole I knew of. All the young orioles had flown except this one, and he seemed to be too timid to try. He stood on the edge of the nest, and called and cried, but did not use his wings.

The father came to see him now and then, and at last he made him fly in this way. He caught a fine, large moth, and brought it to the nest in his beak. The young bird was very hungry, and when he saw the food, he opened his mouth and fluttered his wings, so eager to get it he could hardly wait.

But the parent did not feed him. He let him see the moth, and then, with a loud call, he flew to the next tree. When the little oriole saw the food going away, he forgot he was afraid, and with a cry of horror he sprang after it; and so, before he knew it, he had flown.

After the young bird can fly, he needs to be taught to get his own living, or to find his own food, and also where to sleep. Then he must learn what to be afraid of, and how to protect himself from his enemies.

He needs to know the different calls and cries of his family, and what they all mean. He has to learn to fly in a flock with other birds, and he must learn to sing. No doubt there are many more lessons for him that we do not know about.

If you watch little birds just out of the nest, you may see them being taught the most useful and important lesson, how to find their food.

The robin mother takes her little one to the ground, and shows him where the worms live and how to get them. The owl mother finds a mouse creeping about in the grass, and teaches the owlets how to pounce upon it, by doing it herself before them.

The old swallow takes her youngsters into the air, and shows them how to catch little flies on the wing; while mother phœbe teaches hers to sit still and watch till a fly comes near, and then fly out and catch it.

If you watch long enough, after a while you may see the old bird, who is training a young one, fly away. She may leave the young one alone on a tree or the ground, and be gone a long time.

Before many minutes the little one will get hungry, and begin to call for food. But by and by, if nobody comes to feed him, he will think to look around for something to eat. Thus he will get his lesson in helping himself.

Once I saw a woodpecker father bring his little one to a fence, close by some raspberry bushes that were full of berries. He fed him two or three berries, to teach him what they were and where they grew, and then quietly slipped away.

When the young bird began to feel hungry he cried out; but nobody came. Then he looked over at the raspberries, and reached out and tried to get hold of one. After trying three or four times, and nearly pitching off his perch, he did reach one. Then how proud he was!