Yet, as nature is cleanly in all her ways, the
young perform this office for themselves in a little time by
thrusting their tails out at the aperture of their nest. As the young of
small birds presently arrive at their elikia (in Greek) or full growth,
they soon become impatient of confinement, and sit all day with
their heads out at the orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the
nest, supply them with food from morning to night. For a time the
young are fed on the wing by their parents; but the feat is done by
so quick and almost imperceptible a sleight, that a person must
have attended very exactly to their motions before he would be
able to perceive it. As soon as the young are able to shift for
themselves, the dams immediately turn their thoughts to the
business of a second brood: while the first flight, shaken off and
rejected by their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are the
birds that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny mornings and
evenings round towers and steeples, and on the mobs of churches
and houses.
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