“And no wonder,” said the mother woodpigeon. “When we swallow it, it is hard and cold, but when it comes up again for them to swallow, it is soft and warm, and very like milk. It is not every bird who feeds its young ones like that.”
“Oh no,” said Tommy Smith; “most birds fly to them with a worm or a caterpillar in their beaks, and give it to them just as it is.”
“That is the old-fashioned way,” said the mother woodpigeon; “but we are more civilised, and have learnt to prepare our children’s food.”
“Besides,” said the father woodpigeon, “we eat seeds and grains, and little things like that, and it would take us a very long time to carry a sufficient number of them to the nest. Our young ones would be so hungry, and we should not be able to bring them enough to satisfy them, and then they would starve. So we have thought of this way of managing it, and I think it is one of the cleverest things in the whole world.”
“Yes, indeed,” cooed the mother woodpigeon, as she looked down from the branch where she sat on her nest; “one of the cleverest things in the whole world.”
“Is it only pigeons that do that?” asked Tommy Smith.
“I won’t say that,” answered the mother woodpigeon. “There are some other birds, I believe, who have followed our example.”
“Yes, they imitate us,” said the father woodpigeon; “but they can never be pigeons, however much they try to be.”
“Never,” said the mother woodpigeon. “They don’t drink water as we do. That is the test.”