OCR Text |
Show 458 ON THE FEEDING OF YOUNG CORMORANTS. [June 6, surrounding the other flexor tendons. The flexor brevis which is present, though small, is thus the only functional flexor of that digit. June 6, 1882. Prof. Flower, LL.D., F.R.S., President, in the Chair. The Secretary called attention to the curious way in which the young Cormorants, lately hatched in the Gardens, were fed by the parent bird, and exhibited a drawing by Mrs. H u g h Blackburn, taken on the 9th ult., illustrating this subject. Two Cormorants deposited by Capt. Salvin in the autumn of 1881 had paired in March last, and built a nest of sticks on a stump in the enclosure called the " Gull pond." Two young ones were hatched on the 22nd April last, after four weeks' incubation, both parents taking turns on the nest. The young birds were at first naked, but soon became covered with black down-plumage, whence they were now beginning to moult into their adult dress. Cormorants and their young (from a drawing by Mrs. Hugh Blackburn). As would be seen by the illustration, the parents fed the young ones by allowing them to poke their heads far down into the parents' throats and to extract the semidigested fish from the stomach. |