INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 



55i 



at once, for it would then stay by its nest and strike angrily at an 

 intruder. The reverse of such behavior was further seen when the egg 

 of a " sitter/' even after several days of incubation, was summarily 

 removed. 



The cedarbird, ordinarily so timid that it will promptly abandon 

 its new made nest if disturbed in the slightest degree, in the course of 

 a few days becomes so " bold " as to submit to any change which the 

 experimenter chooses to make. I have known this bird to stand on its 

 displaced nesting bough, which had been sawn from a tree and mounted 

 on stakes in a field for close-at-hand study, to permit the writer and a 

 companion to approach within three feet and inspect bird and nest at 

 leisure, while the adult assumed that curious bold upright attitude, with 

 beak pointed to the zenith, in which nature seems to transform the 

 actor into a part of the tree itself. 



In my work on " The Home Life of Wild Birds " numerous illus- 

 trations of the action of this remarkable instinct are given. In one 

 case a flicker, before so wary, for a few days after the young were born, 

 would permit of any liberties, even to the sawing of a large window in 

 the side of her nesting tree, without budging a feather, not even to 

 shake the sawdust from her back, and allowing herself to be enclosed 

 in the hand. In the Bahama Islands I have taken both the yellow- 



Fig. 13. White-bellied Martin returning a feather to her nest, from which it had 

 been blown by the wind the moment her nest-box was opened. 



