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!
The father stayed away an hour or more, and before he came back that young woodpecker had learned to help himself very well; though the minute his father came, he began to flutter his wings and beg to be fed, as if he were half starved.
A lady, who fed the wild birds on her window sill for many years, and watched their ways, says she often saw the old birds teaching their little ones. They showed them where the food was to be found, and, she says, regularly taught them the art of eating.