How birds learn to make nests and songs.

  • Miller, W. J. C. (William John Clarke), 1832-1903.
Date:
[1897]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: How birds learn to make nests and songs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Reprinted from Nature Notes, September, 1897.] HOW BIRDS LEARN TO MAKE NESTS AND SONGS. ilN interesting question often arises as to how birds come to make the nests they do, and sing the several songs peculiar to their species. Many of these nests are, we know, very elaborate structures ; and the songs that some of the birds sing live for ever in poetry, as well as in the memories of all who delight in country sights and country sounds. And the question arises, quite naturally, how do the birds get to do these things ? Is the nest-building taught by their ancestors to thrush, chaffinch and long-tailed tit ; and are the songs handed on to skylark, or blackcap, or nightingale, from one generation to another ? These questions, though they press for solution, do not often, if at all, meet with the consider- ation that they so admirably deserve. People are fond of answering such questions, off-hand, by saying they are done by instinct , but this is a simple way of getting rid of the question altogether; and it is in much the same way that the origin of some fine structure on earth is unhesitatingly ascribed to the Druids, or to that mighty constructor, the Devil; and this habit gives us Druid s walls or dykes, and Devil’s punch-bowls or bridges, in various parts of many lands. Inquirers seldom pause to consider what instinct is, wherein it differs from reason, and whether, for instance, man may be considered to possess and use this faculty. Instinct may be fairly defined, for our purpose, as the performance of complex acts, absolutely without instruction or previously acquired knowledge ; and if we look to the recognized authorities to ascertain what they suppose mav be accomplished by instinct, we find that they differ fofo ceelo. One very high authority, who has written on mental evolution in animals, says, very definitely, that “the singing of birds is certainly instinctive.” Another is of opinion that “ notes in k'rfs ,*r® n° more innate than language is in man, and depend entirely on the master under which they are bred, as far as their organs will enable them to imitate the sounds which they have frequent opportunities of hearing.” Between these two dia-