136 Wild Birds. 



and disappeared among the snow-laden trees. There were about fifty birds in this flock 

 and the grove resounded with their clear whistled notes. They were easily approached 

 at all times and in all weathers, during the early weeks of their visit, agreeing in this re- 

 spect with the Bohemian Waxwing, the Arctic representative of the Cedar-bird. Two 

 small flocks of these birds visited Burlington, Vermont, November 24 and January 21, 

 1882. A low plaintive call-note first attracted my attention, when a party of eight of 

 these fine birds came into view. They were leisurely preening their feathers on the 

 lower branches of a red cedar tree. When close upon them, they paid no attention, and 

 finally wishing to see them fly, I had almost to shake them from the branches. They 

 went off in a compact body like their smaller relative, giving a "see, zci\ zee-ze ! " 

 call-note. 



Audubon speaks of the familiarity of Crossbills which he observed while on a 

 moose hunt in the summer of 1833. They alighted on his head, showing no fear, and 

 five or six were caught at one time under a snowshoe. 1 



This tameness found among many Arctic species has been met with on a much wider 

 scale in remote oceanic islands, where man is almost unknown and where the conditions 

 of life are very different from those of the mainland. The inhabitants of the Galapagos 

 Islands, which lie under the equator between five and six hundred miles from the west 

 coast of South America, offer a most striking example of this anomaly. Their natural 

 history which has been told in one of Darwin's interesting chapters, first led him to reflect 

 on the origin of species. 2 He says that many of the animals and plants are aboriginal, and 

 found nowhere else, that " there is even a difference between the inhabitants of the differ- 

 ent islands ; yet all show a marked relationship with those of America. . . . The 

 archipelago is a little world within itself, or rather a satellite attached to America, whence 

 it has derived a few stray colonists, and has received the general character of its indi- 

 genous productions." He found twenty-six species of land birds, all peculiar to the 

 islands excepting only one, the Bobolink, whose summer range extends as far north as 

 Labrador. 



All the common terrestrial birds of these volcanic islands were very tame, and all 

 says Darwin, " often approached sufficiently near to be killed with a switch, and some- 

 times, as I myself tried, with a cap or hat. A gun is here almost superfluous ; 

 for with the muzzle I pushed a hawk off the branch of a tree. One day whilst lying 

 down, a mocking-thrush alighted on the edge of a pitcher, made of the shell of a tortoise, 

 which I held in my hand, and began very quickly to sip the water ; it allowed me to lift 

 it from the ground whilst seated on the vessel: I often tried, and very nearly suc- 

 ceeded in catching these birds by their legs. 



" These birds, although now still more persecuted, do not readily become wild : in 

 Charles Island, which had then been colonized about six years, I saw a boy sitting by a 

 well with a switch in his hand, with which he killed the doves and finches as they came to 

 drink. He had already procured a little heap of them for his dinner; and he said that 

 he had constantly been in the habit of waiting by this well for the same purpose." 



Darwin remarks that the most anomalous fact on this subject which he had met was 

 the wildness of certain small birds in the Arctic portions of North America, while some 

 of the same species were said to be tame in their winter quarters in the United States. 



Ornitli,<l^'i::il A';,I-;-,I///_V, vol. ii., p. 436. ! Journal of Researches, Chapter XVI I. 



