of the
passage. Here it would pause a moment, as if to determine in which
expectant mouth to place the morsel, and then disappear within. In
about half a minute, during which time the chattering of the young
gradually subsided, the bird would again emerge, but this time bearing
in its beak the ordure of one of the helpless family. Flying away very
slowly with head lowered and extended, as if anxious to hold the
offensive object as far from its plumage as possible, the bird dropped
the unsavory morsel in the course of a few yards, and, alighting on a
tree, wiped its bill on the bark and moss. This seemed to be the order
all day,--carrying in and carrying out. I watched the birds for an
hour, while my companions were taking their turn in exploring the lay
of the land around us, and noted no variation in the programme. It
would be curious to know if the young are fed and waited upon in
regular order, and how, amid the darkness and the crowded state of the
apartment, the matter is so neatly managed. But ornithologists are all
silent upon the subject.

[Illustration: THE YELLOW-BELLIED WOODPECKER.]

This practice of the birds is not so uncommon as it might at first
seem. It is, indeed, almost an invariable rule among all land birds.
With woodpeckers and kindred species, and with birds that burrow in
the ground, as bank swallows, kingfishers, etc., it is a necessity.
The accumulation of the excrement in the nest would prove most fatal
to the young.

But even among birds that neither bore nor mine, but which build a
shallow nest on the branch of a tree or upon the ground, as the robin,
the finches, the buntings, etc., the ordure of the young is removed to
a distance by the parent bird. When the robin is seen going away from
its brood with a slow, heavy flight, entirely different from its
manner a moment before on approaching the nest with a cherry or worm,
it is certain to be engaged in this office. One may observe the social
sparrow, when feeding its young, pause a moment after the worm has
been given, and hop around on the brink of the nest, observing the
movements within.

The instinct of cleanliness no doubt prompts the action in all cases,
though the disposition to secrecy or concealment may not be unmixed
with it.

The swallows form an exception to the rule, the excrement being voided
by the young over the brink of the nest. They form an exception, also,
to the rule of secrecy, aiming not so much to conceal the n