The Wren by Stephen Moss

Author:Stephen Moss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2018-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

From now on, having left the safety of the nest, it really is every chick for itself. In an ideal world, the parent wren would know which chick it had just fed, and offer the next morsel of food to a different one, and so on until all the chicks were equally satisfied. But in a world ruled by competition between individuals, rather than some amorphous concept of ‘the good of the species’, such fairness is off the agenda. Basically, the chick that shouts the loudest gets most food, and will be preferred by the female – even if she offered it food the last time she came, and the time before that.

The chicks signal their hunger, and eagerness to be fed, in the time-honoured way of all young songbirds: they open their mouths as wide as they can, revealing the still-yellow gape that acts as a stimulus to the parent to drop food there. In case that is not enough, the chicks also utter a loud and persistent call: a repeated, high-pitched squeak. The call also serves to keep the chicks close to one another, enabling the parent wren to relocate any strays if they happen to wander off, or are dispersed by the approach of a predator like a cat or sparrowhawk.

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