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.

    5/8 (page 5)
    from instinct, adopt means subservient to the end to be attained, and are uniformly found to do so, they are not in the least degree conscious that these means are subservient to the ends. An in- stinctive action originates in the brain, and is probably accom- panied by consciousness ; but there is no conscious working towards an object in view. The subject is, however, beset with difficulties, which such considerations as these do not enable us to overcome. It is very difficult to distinguish between what birds learn, and what they seem to know by some innate faculty. Pheasants have been found to feed quietly while rifle balls were passing over them; they have either learnt to distinguish between a shot-gun and a rifle, or are acting from utter greediness. Frank Buckland gives an account of a fisherman’s drawing up his line suddenly and whipping out the eye of a pike, which at his next cast, the eye still on the hook, was gulped by the bleeding pike. Swifts, swallows, and martins have, in comparatively recent times, learnt how to avail themselves of barns, chimneys and house- roofs ; and similar adaptabilities have been shown by other birds. The single note of the cuckoo is, no doubt, the very easiest for such a bird, as for all boys, to make, and this we may take to be a good reason why, amid all the chorus of the woods, the cuckoo adopts this cry. Then again, we must recognize that some birds have a sense of beauty, and derive pleasure from objects that are to them, as to us, delightful to the eye. The humming-birds decorate their nests with great taste, weaving into the structure pieces of lichen ; and the bower-birds collect flowers and fruits of bright and varied colours wherewith to decorate their home, and are careful to strew the ground with tender moss, and to get rid of all unsightly things from their vicinity. fa1cJ>hUh s*Ye morai matters, and such things as truth and falsehood it is difficult to see what, in fact, it is that really does lie beyond the limits of animal intelligence; and even here some Tth Stem njW and then t0 show themselves quite conscious that they have done wrong. • Perbaps in regard to song, we may not be far wrong in think. LnvthfnVthbirC!f’ the knowledge of comes nearer to instinct than and^haf th6y d°i’ hat’ *S * rule’Xt needs simPiy to be awakened, St hp n’ht awakffninS ls easy 5 if the bird hears his own parent of fhphlpP kS UP he S°ng- 30 Soon that 11 seems absurd tospeak of the earning as instruction ; if he hears other birds sing he no doubt learns to imitate them, but the process is often a bng one 7 Tper son«: ,r a„0ther bta,, After all, we shall probably find it safest to sav thof ■