446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



young birds, preparing to fight with erected neck-hackles ; nor can 

 these feathers when erected serve as a means of defence, for cock- 

 fighters have found by experience that it is advantageous to trim 

 them. The male ruff {Machetes pugnax) likewise erects its collar of 

 feathers when fighting. When a dog approaches a common hen with 

 her chickens, she spreads out her wings, raises her tail, ruffles all her 

 feathers, and, looking as ferocious as possible, dashes at the intruder. 

 The tail is not always held in exactly the same position ; it is some- 

 times so much erected, that the central feathers, as in the accompany- 

 ing drawing, almost touch the back. Swans, when angered, likewise 

 raise their wings and tail, and erect their feathers. They open their 

 beaks, and make by paddling little rapid starts forward, against any 

 one who approaches the water's edge too closely. Tropic birds ' when 

 disturbed on their nests are said not to fly away, but ' merely to stick 

 out their feathers and scream.' The barn-owl, when approached, ' in- 

 stantly swells out its plumage, extends its wings and tail, hisses and 

 clacks its mandibles with force and rapidity.' a So do other kinds of 

 owls. Hawks, as I am informed by Mr. Jenner Weir, likewise ruffle 

 their feathers, and spread out their wings and tail under similar ch> 

 .cumstances. Some kinds of parrots erect their feathers ; and I have 

 seen this action in the cassowary, when angered at the sight of an 

 ant-eater. Young cuckoos in the nest raise their feathers, open their 

 mouths widely, and make themselves as frightful as possible. 



" Small birds, also, as I hear from Mr. Weir, such as various finches, 

 buntings, and warblers, when angry, ruffle all their feathers, or only 

 those round the neck ; or they spread out their wings and tail-feathers. 

 With their plumage in this state, they rush at each other with open 

 beaks and threatening o-estures. Mr. Weir concludes from his larsre 

 experience that the erection of the feathers is caused much more by 

 anger than by fear. He gives as an instance a hybrid goldfinch of a 

 most irascible disposition, which, when approached too closely by a 

 servant, instantly assumes the appearance of a ball of ruffled feathers. 

 He believes that birds when frightened, as a general rule, closely ad- 

 press all their feathers, and their consequently diminished, size is often 

 astonishing. As soon as they recover from their fear or surprise, the 

 first thing which they do is to shake out their feathers. The best in- 

 stances of this adpression of the feathers and apparent shrinking of 

 the body from fear, which Mr. Weir has noticed, have been in the quail 

 and grass-parrakeet. The habit is intelligible in these birds from their 

 being accustomed, when in danger, either to squat on the ground or 

 to sit motionless on a branch, so as to escape detection. Though, with 

 birds, anger may be the chief and commonest cause of the erection of 

 the feathers, it is probable that young cuckoos when looked at in the 



1 Phaeton rubricauda : "Ibis," vol. iii., 1861, p. 180. 



2 On tbe Strix fammea, Audubon, " Ornitbological Biography," 1864, vol. ii., p. 407 

 I have observed other cases in the Zoological Gardens. 



