250 Mr Black wall on the Instincts of Birds. 



A lady who keeps canaries was obliged to separate a young 

 brood from their parents, having observed that the male bird 

 stripped off the soft feathers from their necks and wings, for 

 the purpose of lining a newly constructed nest with them, not- 

 withstanding a supply of old feathers had been put into the 

 cage. From this remarkable fact, for which I am indebted to 

 Dr W. Henry, it is evident, that canaries do not collect mate- 

 rials for their nests indiscriminately, but that they make a selec- 

 tion, in which they are directed by powers of a higher order 

 than those of a merely instinctive character. 



Mr White, in his Natural History of Selborne, page 59, in- 

 forms us, that in Sussex, where there are very few towers and 

 steeples, the jackdaw builds annually under ground, in deserted 

 rabbit furrows. The same author remarks also, p. 175-6, that 

 many sand-martins nestle and breed in the scaffold-holes of the 

 back wall of William of Wykeman's stables, which stand in a 

 very sequestered enclosure, facing a large and beautiful lake 

 near the town of Bishops Waltham in Hampshire ; and some 

 birds, as already represented, frequently spare their own la- 

 bour, by taking possession of the nests of others. 



In these instances there certainly appears to be a great dis- 

 play of sagacity ; yet there are facts which seem to render it 

 doubtful, whether the feathered tribes are capable of deriving 

 much benefit from experience, or of exercising any remarkable 

 degree of intelligence. Thus, birds when engaged in the per- 

 formance of their parental duties, expose themselves without he- 

 sitation to dangers, which at another period they would careful- 

 ly avoid. Many species, also, while under the incitement of ap- 

 petite, are readily snared by the most simple contrivances, di- 

 rectly after witnessing the capture of their companions ; and 

 rooks continue to breed in those rookeries, where the greater 

 part of their young is destroyed every spring *. For three suc- 

 cessive seasons a pair of redstarts persisted in making their 

 nest in the upper part of our pump, on that end of the 

 lever which is connected with the rod of the piston, and, of 

 course, always had it disturbed when that engine was used. 



• I am assured by T. Leigh, Esq., that many thousands of young rooks 

 are shot every breeding-season in his extensive rookery at Lyme Park, in 

 ('heshire. 



