When the young do come the female is usually
more active in feeding them than the male. Among the birds of prey, like hawks and eagles, the female is the larger and more powerful, and therefore better able to defend and to care for her young. Among all animals, the affection of the mother for her offspring seems to be greater than that of her mate, though among the birds the male sometimes shows a superabundance of paternal regard that takes in the young of other species. Thus a correspondent sends me this curious incident of a male bluebird and some young vireos. A pair of bluebirds were rearing their second brood in a box on the porch of my correspondent, and a pair of vireos had a nest with young in some lilac bushes but a few feet away. The writer had observed the male bluebird perch in the lilacs near the young vireos, and, he feared, with murderous intent. On such occasions the mother vireo would move among the upper branches much agitated. If she grew demonstrative the bluebird would drive her away. One afternoon the observer pulled away the leaves so as to have a full view of the vireo's nest from the seat where he sat not ten feet away. Presently he saw the male bluebird come to the nest with a worm in its beak, and, as the young vireos stretched up their gaping mouths, he dropped the worm into one of them. Then he reached over and waited upon one of the young birds as its own mother would have done. A few moments after he came to his own brood, with a worm or insect, and then the next trip he visited the nest of the neighbor again, greatly to the displeasure of
the vireo, who scolded him sharply as she watched his movements from a near branch. My correspondent says: "I watched them for several days; sometimes the bluebird would visit his own nest several times before lending a hand to the vireos. Sometimes he resented the vireos' plaintive fault-finding and drove them away. I never saw the female bluebird near the vireos' nest."
That the male bird should be broader in his sympathies and affections will not, to most men at least, seem strange.
Another correspondent relates an equally curious incident about a wren and some young robins. "One day last summer," he says, "while watching a robin feeding her young, I was surprised to see a wren alight on the edge of the nest in the absence of the robin, and deposit a little worm in the throat of one of the young robins. It then flew off about ten feet, and it seemed as if it would almost burst with excessive volubility. It then disappeared, and the robin came and went, just as the wren returned with another worm for the young robins. This was kept up for an hour. Once they arrived simultaneously, when the wren was apparently much agitated, but waited impatiently on its previous perch, some ten feet off, until the robin had left, when it visited the nest as before. I climbed the tree for a closer inspection, and found only a well-regulated robin household, but nowhere a wren's nest. After coming down I walked around the tree and discovered a hole, and upon looking in saw a nest of sleeping
featherless wrens. At no time while I was in the vicinity had the wren visited these little ones."
Of all our birds, the wren seems the most overflowing with life and activity. Probably in this instance it had stuffed its own young to repletion, when its own activity bubbled over into the nest of its neighbor. It is well known that the male wren frequently builds what are called "cock-nests." It is simply so full of life and joy and of the propagating instinct, that after the real nest is completed, and while the eggs are being laid, it gives vent to itself in constructing these sham, or cock-nests. I have found the nest of the long-billed marsh wren surrounded by half a dozen or more of these make-believers. The gushing ecstatic nature of the bird expresses itself in this way.
I have myself known but one instance of a bird lending a hand in feeding young not its own. This instance is to be set down to the credit of a female English sparrow. A little "chippie" had on her hands the task of supplying the wants of that horseleech, young cow-bunting. The sparrow looked on from its perch a few yards away, and when the "chippie" was off looking up food, it would now and then bring something and place it in the beak of the clamorous bunting. I think the "chippie" appreciated its good offices. Certainly its dusky foster-child did. This bird, when young, seems the most greedy of all fledgelings. It cries "More," "More," incessantly. When its foster parent is a small bird like "chippie" or one of the warblers, one would
think it would swallow its parent when food is brought it. I suppose a similar spectacle is witnessed in England when the cuckoo is brought up by a smaller bird, as is always the case. Sings the fool in "Lear:"—
"The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,