The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals Part 20

XV

THE MENTAL TRAITS OF BIRDS

In comparison with mammalian mentality, the avian mind is much more elementary and primitive. It is as far behind the average of the mammals as the minds of fishes are inferior to those of reptiles.

Instinct Prominent in Birds. The average bird is more a creature of instinct than of reason. Primarily it lives and moves by and through the knowledge that it has inherited, rather than by the observations it has made and the things it has thought out in its own head.

But let it not for one moment be supposed that the instinctive knowledge of the bird is of a mental quality inferior to that of the mammal. The difference is in kind only, not in degree. As a factor in self-preservation the keen and correct reasoning of the farm-land fox is in no sense superior to the wonderful instinct and prescience of the golden plover that, on a certain calendar day, or week, bids farewell to its comfortable breeding-grounds in the cold north beyond the arctic circle, rises high in the air and launches forth on its long and perilous migration flight of 8,000 miles to its winter resort in Argentina.

The Migrations of Birds. Volumes have been written on the migrations of birds. The subject is vast, and inexhaustable. It is perhaps the most wonderful of all the manifestations of avian intelligence. It is of interest chiefly to the birds of the temperate zone, whose summer homes and food supplies are for four months of the year buried under a mantle of snow and ice. All but a corporal's guard of the birds of the United States and Canada must go south every winter or perish from starvation and cold. It is a case of migrate or die. Many of the birds do not mind the cold of the northern winter--if it is dry; and _if they could be fed in winter,_ many of them would remain with us throughout the year.

Consider the migratory habits of our own home favorites, and see what they reveal. After all else has been said, bird migration is the one unfathomable wonder of the avian world.

Really, we know of it but little more than we know of the songs of the morning stars. We have learned when the birds start; we know that many of them fly far above the earth; we know where some of them land, and the bird calendars show approximately when they will return. And is not that really about _all_ that we do know?

[Ill.u.s.tration with caption: MIGRATION OF THE GOLDEN PLOVER From "Bird Migration,", by Dr. W. W. Cooke, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1915.]

What courage it must take, to start on the long, tiresome and dangerous journey! How do they know where to go, far into the heart of the South, to find rest, food and security? When and where do they stop on the way to feed? Vast areas are pa.s.sed over without alighting; for many species never are seen in mid career.

Why is it that the golden plover feels that it is worth while to fly from the arctic coast to Argentina?

Let any man--if one there be--who is not profoundly impressed by the combined instinct and the reasoning of migratory birds do himself the favor to procure and study the 47-page pamphlet by Dr.

Wells W. Cooke, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, ent.i.tled "Bird Migration." I wish I could reproduce it entire; but since that is impossible, here are a few facts and figures from it.

The Bobolink summers in the northern United States and southern Canada, and winters in Paraguay, making 5000 miles of travel each way.

The Scarlet Tanager summers in the northeastern quarter of the United States and winters in Colombia, Equador and northern Peru, a limit to limit flight of 3,880 miles.

The Golden Plover (_Charadrius dominicus_).--"In fall it flies over the ocean from Nova Scotia to South America, 2,400 miles--the longest known flight of any bird. In spring it returns by way of the Mississippi Valley. Thus the migration routes form an enormous ellipse, with a minor axis of 2,000 miles and a major axis stretching 8,000 miles from arctic America to Argentina."

(Cooke.) The Arctic Tern (_Sterna paradisaea_), is "the champion long-distance migrant of the world. It breeds as far north as it can find land on which to build its nest, and winters as far south as there is open water to furnish it food. The extreme summer and winter homes are 11,000 miles apart, or a yearly round trip of 22,000 miles." (Cooke.)

By what do migrating birds guide their courses high in air on a pitch-dark night,--their busy time for flying? Do they, too, know about the mariner's Southern Cross, and steer by it on starlit nights? Equally strange things have happened.

The regular semi-annual migrations of birds may fairly be regarded as the high-water mark of instinct so profound and far-reaching that it deserves to rank as high as reason. To me it is one of the most marvelous things in Nature's Book of Wonders. I never see a humming-bird poised over a floral tube of a trumpet creeper without pausing, in wonder that is perpetual, and asking the eternal question: "Frail and delicate feathered sprite, that any storm-gust might dash to earth and destroy, and that any enemy might crush, _how_ do you make your long and perilous journeys unstarved and unkilled? Is it because you bear a charmed life? What is the unsolved mystery of your tiny existence in this rough and cruel world?"

We understand well enough the foundation principles of mammalian and avian life, and existence under adverse circ.u.mstances. The mammal is tied to his environment. He cannot go far from the circ.u.mpolar regions of his home. A bear chained to a stake is emblematic of the universal handicap on mammalian life. Survive or perish, the average land-going quadruped must stay put, and make the best of the home in which he is born. If he attempts to migrate fast and far, he is reasonably certain to get into grave danger, and lose his life.

The bird, however, is a free moral agent. If the purple grackle does not like the sunflower seeds in my garden, lo! he is up and away across the Sound to Oyster Bay, Long Island, where his luck may be better. Failing there, he gives himself a transfer to Wilmington, or Richmond, via his own Atlantic coast line.

The wonderful migratory instincts of birds have been developed and intensified through countless generations by the imperative need for instinctive guidance, and the comparatively small temptation to inductive reasoning based on known facts. Evidently the bird is emboldened to migrate by the comfortable belief that somewhere the world contains food and warmth to its liking, and that if it flies fast enough and far enough it will find it.

As a weather prophet, the prescience of the bird is strictly limited. The warm spells of late February deceive the birds just as they do the flowers of the peach tree and the apple. Often the bluebirds and robins migrate northward too early, encounter blizzards, and perish in large numbers from snow, sleet, cold and hunger.

The Homing Sense of Birds. We can go no farther than to say that while the homing instinct of certain species of birds is quite well known, the mental process by which it functions is practically unknown. The direction instinct of the homing pigeon is marvelous, but we know that that instinct does not leap full- fledged from the nest. The homer needs a.s.sistance and training.

When it is about three months old, it is taken in a basket to a point a mile distant from its home and liberated. If it makes good in returning to the home loft, the distances are increased by easy stages--two, three, five, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty and seventy- five miles usually being flown before the bird is sent as far as 100 miles. The official long-distance record for a homing pigeon is 1689.44 miles, held by an American bird.

The homing instinct, or sense, is present in some mammals, but it is by no means so phenomenal as in some species of birds. In mammals it is individual rather than species-wide. Individual horses, dogs and cats have done wonderful things under the propulsion of the homing instinct, but that instinct is by no means general throughout those species. Among wild animals, exhibitions of the home-finding instinct are rare, but the annals of the Zoological Park contain one amusing record.

For emergency reasons, a dozen fallow deer once were quartered in our Bison range, behind a fence only sixty-six inches high.

Presently they leaped out to freedom, disappeared in the thick northern forests of the Bronx, and we charged them up to profit and loss. But those deer soon found that life outside our domain was not the dream of paradise that they had supposed. After about a week of wandering through a cold, unsympathetic and oatless world those were sadder and wiser deer, and one night they all returned and joyously and thankfully jumped back into their range, where they were happy ever after.

Recognition of Sanctuary Protection. In this field of precise observation and reasoning, most birds,--if not indeed all of them,--are quick in discernment and accurate in deduction. The great gauntlet of guns has taught the birds of the United States and Canada to recognize the difference between areas of shooting and no shooting. Dull indeed is the bird mind that does not know enough to return to the feeding-ground in which it has been safe from attack. The wild geese and ducks are very keen about sanctuary waters, and no protected pond or river is too small to command attention. Our own little Lake Aga.s.siz, in the New York Zoological Park, each year is the resort of hundreds of mallards and black ducks. And each year a number of absolutely wild wood ducks breed there and in spite of all dangers rear their young.

Our wild-fowl pond, surrounded by various installations for birds, several times has been honored by visiting delegations of wild geese, seven of which were caught in 1902 for exhibition.

The most astounding example of avian recognition of protection and human friends.h.i.+p is the spectacle of Mr. Jack Miner's wild goose sanctuary at Kingsville, Ontario, not far from Detroit. With his tile works on one side and his home on the other, he scooped out between them clay for his factory and made a small pond. With deliberate and praiseworthy intention Mr. Miner planted there a little flock of pinioned wild Canada geese, as a notice of sanctuary and an invitation to wild flocks to come down for food, rest and good society.

Very slowly at first the wild geese began to come; but finally the word was pa.s.sed along the line from Hudson Bay to Currituck Sound that Miner's roadhouse was a good place at which to stop. Year by year the wild geese came, and saw, and were conquered. So many thousands came that presently Mr. Miner grew tired of spending out of his own pocket more than $700 a year for goose corn; and then the Canadian government most commendably a.s.sumed the burden, and made Mr. Miner's farm a national bird preserve. [Footnote: Mr.

Miner is writing his wild-goose story into a book: and the story is worth it!]

The annals of wild life protection literature contain many records and ill.u.s.trations of the remarkable quickness and thoroughness of sanctuary recognition by birds. On the other hand I feel greatly annoyed by the failure of waterfowl to reason equally well regarding the decoys of duck-shooters. They fail to learn, either by experience or hearsay, that small flocks of ducks sitting motionless near a sh.o.r.e are loaded, and liable to go off. They fail to learn that it is most wise to settle well outside such flocks of alleged ducks, and that it is a fatal mistake to plump down on the top of a motionless bunch.

Protective a.s.sociation of Wasps and Caciques. The colonizing caciques, of South America, representing four genera, are very solicitous of the safety of their colonies. In numerous cases, these colonies are found in a.s.sociation with wasps, one or more nests invariably being found near the nests of the birds. It is natural to infer that this strange a.s.sociation is due to the initiative of the birds. When monkeys attack the birds, the birds need the stinging insects.

As usual in the study of wild creatures, the first thing that we encounter in the wild bird is

Temperament. On this hangs the success or failure of a species in a.s.sociation with man. Temperament in the most intellectual wild creatures is just as evident and negotiable to the human eye as colors are in fur or feathers.

A vastly preponderating number of bird species are of sanguine temperament; and it is this fact alone that renders it possible for us to exhibit continuously from 700 to 800 species of birds.

Sensible behavior in captivity is the one conspicuous trait of character in which birds mentally and physically are far better balanced than mammals. But few birds are foolishly nervous or hysterical, and when once settled down the great majority of them are sanguine and philosophical. Birds of a great many species can be caught in an adult state and settled down in captivity without difficulty; whereas all save a few species of mammals, when captured as adults, are irreconcilable fighters and many of them die far too quickly. In a well-regulated zoological park nearly every animal that has been caught when adult is a failure and a nuisance.

To name the species of birds that can be caught fully grown and settled down for exhibition purposes, would create a list of formidable length. It is indeed fortunate for us that this is true; for the rearing of nestlings is a tedious task.

A conspicuous exception to the rule of philosophic sedateness in newly caught birds is the loon, or great northern diver. That bird is so exceedingly nervous and foolish, and so persistent in its evil ways, that never once have we succeeded in inducing a loon to settle down on exhibition and be good. When caught and placed in our kind of captivity, the loon goes daft. It dives and dives, and swims under water until it is completely exhausted; it loses its appet.i.te, and very soon dies. Of course if one had a whole marine biological station to place at the disposal of the foolish loon, it might get on.

There are other odd exceptions to the rule of normal bird conduct.

Some of our upland game birds, particularly the Franklin grouse and ptarmigan of the Rocky Mountains, display real mental deficiencies in the very necessary business of self-preservation.

WILDNESS AND TAMENESS OF THE RUFFED GROUSE. The ruffed grouse is one of the most difficult of all North American game birds to keep in captivity. This fact is due largely, though not entirely, to the nervous and often hysterical temperament of this species. Some birds will within a reasonable time quiet down and accept captivity, but others throughout long periods,--or forever,-- remain wild as hawks, and perpetually try to dash themselves to pieces against the wire of their enclosures. Prof. A. A. Allen of Cornell once kept a bird for an entire year, only to find it at the end of that time hopelessly wild; so he gave the bird its liberty.

However, in this species there are numerous exceptions. Some wing- tipped birds have calmed down and accepted captivity gracefully and sensibly, and a few of the cases of this kind have been remarkable. The most astonis.h.i.+ng cases, however, have been of the tameness of free wild birds, in the Catskills, and also near the city of Schenectady. A great many perfectly truthful stories have been published of wild birds that actually sought close acquaintance with people, and took food from their hands.

We have been asked to account for those strange manifestations, but it is impossible to do so. It seems that in some manner, certain grouse individuals learned that Man is not always a killer and a dangerous animal, and so those birds accepted him as a friend,--until the killers came along and violated the sanctuary status.

It is both necessary, and highly desirable for the increase of species, that all wild birds should fly promptly, rapidly and far from the presence of Man, the Arch Enemy of Wild Life. The species that persistently neglects to do so, or is unable, soon is utterly destroyed. The great auk species was ma.s.sacred and extirpated on Funk Island because it could not get away from its sordid enemies who destroyed it for a paltry supply of _oil_.

The Fool Hen and Its Folly. In our own country there exists a grouse species so foolish in its mind, and so dest.i.tute of the most ordinary instinct of self-preservation that it has been known for many years as "the Fool Hen." Definitely, it is the Franklin Grouse (_Conachites franklini_), and its home is in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. This famous and pitiable victim of misplaced confidence will sit only eight feet up on a jack pine limb, beside a well travelled road, while Mack Norboe dismounts, finds a suitable stick, and knocks the foolish bird dead from its perch. I have seen these birds sit still and patiently wait for their heads to be shot off, one by one, with a .22 calibre revolver when all points of the compa.s.s were open for their escape.

All this, however, must be set down as an unusual and phenomenal absence of the most natural instinct of self-protection. The pinnated grouse, sage grouse, Bob White quail and ptarmigan exercise but little keen reason in self-protection. They are easy marks,--the joy of the pot-hunter and the delight of the duffer "sportsman."

Dullness of Instinct in Grouse and Quail. The pinnated grouse, which in Iowa and the Dakotas positively is a migratory bird, does know enough to fly high when it is migrating, but seemingly this species and the sage grouse never will grow wise enough to save themselves from hunters when on their feeding grounds. In detecting the presence of their arch enemy they are hopelessly dull; and they are slow in taking wing.

The quail is a very good hider, but a mighty poor flyer. When a covey is flushed by a collection of dogs and armed men, the lightning-quick and explosive get-away is all right; but the unshot birds do not fly half far enough! Instead of bowling away for two or three miles and getting clear out of the danger zone and hiding in the nearest timber, what do they do? They foolishly stop on the other side of the field, or in the next acre of brush, in full view of the hunters and dogs, who find it great fun to hustle after them and in fifteen minutes put them up again. Thus it is easy for a hunting party to "follow up" a covey until the last bird of it has been bagged.

Just before the five-year close season on quail went into effect in Iowa, this incident occurred:

On a farm of four hundred acres in the southern part of the state, two gunners killed so nearly up to their bag limit of _fifty birds per day_ that in ten days they went away with 400 quail.

The foolish birds obstinately refused to leave the farm which had been their home and shelter. Day after day the chase with dogs and men, and the fusillade of shots, went briskly on. As a matter of fact, that outfit easily could have gone on until every quail on that farm had fallen.