Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/328

324 estimate of the necessary food supply yields almost incredible results. Cutting Mr. Schlemmer's estimate in two, there would be 1,000,000 birds, and allowing only half a pound a day for each, surely a minimum for these large, rapidly growing birds, they would consume no less than 250 tons daily.

The young birds do not appear to move about much, otherwise the parents would have difficulty in locating them when bringing food, and one can not but wonder how each finds its particular progeny among the hundreds of thousands that appear exactly alike to the human eye. Both parents assist in the labor of feeding the young, a most interesting process. When the parent alights near the young bird the latter begins to beg energetically by gesture, for they are silent as a rule, crouching before the old bird and working the head backward and forward in urgent appeal. Then the youngster grasps the bill of the adult, holding it crosswise, but at an acute angle, when the partly macerated food is squirted with unerring aim right down the throat of the feeding bird, apparently without the loss of a drop. This process is repeated again and again until the parent has literally pumped itself dry.

Here and there are small groups of adults engaged in a sort of play that may be a continuation of the courtship antics, a most laughable performance. The birds commence by walking around each other in a sort of 'cake-walk' with a peculiar swagger suggestive of the 'bowery boy' in his glory. Then they snap their mandibles together with amazing rapidity, making a rattling resembling the drumming of the woodpecker. Again they stand upright, facing each other, and put their bills under their wings 'as if hunting for a cigar,' as suggested by one of our officers. Next they stretch their necks upward with bills pointed