Our Feathered Friends

by Elizabeth Grinnell; Joseph Grinnell

If it looks like rain, the "hair oil," as we call it, is used more freely. Suppose the lady bird wishes to oil the back of her head and around her face. Of course she is not able to take up the bottle and pour the oil into her hand; but she squeezes a little out with her beak, as you would press a rubber bulb. Then she lays the oil on her back just above her wings.

To get the oil all about where she wishes to put it, she rubs her head against it, twisting and turning her neck, until all the feathers of her head are straight and shining.

When a shower comes, the water falls or slides down the bird's back and shoulders on the oil, never finding its wet way beneath to the underclothing. Birds are like those people who live in the cold and wet north. The Eskimo are said to rub their whole bodies with seal or fish oil to keep themselves from being wet.

Bird babies seldom have any clothing to begin life with. A few, such as the walkers and waders and most of the swimmers, like quail and sandpipers and ducks, are covered with thick down when they come out of their shell.

Many of the bird babies in our yard have hardly a trace of the finest down, while others have a little of it in patches, like tiny shirts or bibs. Birds which have no clothes are hatched in the warmest nests, and are close to the mother's breast almost all the time, until their clothes have time to grow. They do not have oil in their pockets until they have feathers to put it on.

A baby bird has such a wide mouth that he looks very odd. But then, you see, his mouth is wide on purpose, so that the parent birds can drop the food in quickly. If the parents had to hunt around to find six or eight little mouths, many a nice bug or worm would get away and the babies go hungry.

Look into a nest and see that four or five open bills are as much of the young birds as you can catch sight of above the edge of the nest. Each is trying to open his mouth a little wider than his brothers and sisters so that it can get the first mouthful. We have often wondered how the mother knows which bird to feed when she comes to the nest. We spent two or three days once to be quite sure that she fed all alike. She fed them in turn, even though she returned many times, not once giving the last one another bite until she had been all around. We do not know whether she counts them or calls them by name, but she makes no mistake in feeding them.

We saw a humming-bird mother one day stand on the head of one little baby birdling while she fed the other. Not all of her weight was on the bird, of course, but quite enough to make him keep out of her way while she fed his brother.

A baby bird gains nothing by teasing and coaxing; it must wait for its turn to come, no matter how hungry it happens to be. It is probably more greedy than hungry when it wants to get more than its share.