The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-07-18
LINGO OF THE COOP.
Chicken Talk That Human Beings
Can Quickly Learn to Comprehend.

Chicken Talk That Human Beings
Can Quickly Learn to Comprehend.
From the Boston Daily Globe.
1t is a strange language that human ears
learn readily to comprehend. For the
most part it is instructive. A fuzzy tod
der six hours out of the shell has five
distinct calls. The first and loudcst OF
them is the lost note. uttered when he
loses sight of his mother or finds him
self out in the cold. 1t Is loud and very
shrrl. The second, the hunger note, is as
shrII, but more plaintive AS soon as
eating begins it changes to a sort Of salts
fed chittering.
After eating they grow sleepy and cry
to be lowered. The note is somewhat like
that of hunger, with a peculiar tremolo
breaking it in the middle. Very rarely
do the mothers disregard it, though they
may be eager 10 so fOraglng over grass
plots or down hedge rows.
The fifth note, the chir-r of fright or as
constituent, is the quaintest of all The
chicks themselves appear to find some
thing in il distinctly humorous When
they are a few days old, if a big wrig-
Cling worm or a fat, juicy bug be thrown
to them with their usual food they will
first draw away from it, chr-rring in
concert, then after cycling it a minute,
seize upon it and toss il about with faint,
immature chuckling cackes. This chir-r
develops at last in the grating call of
warning, at sound of which from their
mothers even the youngest scatter and
scuttle 10 cover.
Awning. a bird, a kite, even a very
small passing cloud, sailing in the sky
overhead, will evoke this warning cry. Let
one hen sound it and every other will
take it up. Often, oftener than not, in
deed the alarm is a false one, but CEN
turtles of hawks have impressed upon each
feathered mind that danger cOmeth out
Of the air." and they govern themselves
accordingly.
Everybody knows how hens cluck to
their broods, but il may be news to many
that though a hundred hens may be cluck
ing in the same Enclosure, the voice OF
each will be individual and unmistakable
to her immediate family. A chick just
out of the nest may not be able to dis
criminate, but let him follow for day
and he is past making mistakes.
Even more wonderful is the hens abil-
ity to differentiate her brood from all
the rest With spiteful, ill-tempered fowls
this often leads to pidful barnyard trage-
dies. An intruder, feeding peacefully
color. has often been slain with one single
blow of a sharp and angry beak.
cock, especially a game cock, or one
of Spanish creed, has a wonderful variety
Of crows. BY means of them, indeed he
runs the whole gamut of approximations,
fear, defiance. triumph, love, hate, rage,
vanity and a fine. ineffable conceit.
1t is the hens without families, though,
that are the true barnyard gossips. Any
fine day, outside moulting time, you may
see them, standing in groups. their heads
close together, chuckling and chattering
like so many blackbirds. or else wallow-
ing in light earth. pecling lightly as they
scratch and wallow, and evidently find
ing 1t good sport to throw dirt over each
other.
hen, save when setting, will never
wallow alone And when setting she is
not normal, but a ragged unkempt and
very ill-tempered shadow of herself,
scowling and pecking al whatever comes
near her.