FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 71 



the aerial life. Numbers of species pair for life, 

 including many that are gregarious; I take it that 

 in such cases the bond which unites male and female 

 throughout the year is essentially the same as that 

 between two horses, or goats, or cows, or llamas, or 

 any other species, wild or domestic, that become 

 attached to one another. The union is different in 

 origin, but once the sexual motive is over and done 

 with the life-partners are no more than friends or 

 chums. Again, birds being so free and light in their 

 motions do not keep so close together as mammals 

 do, hence a comradeship between two in a crowd is 

 not easily detected. We notice and are arrested by 

 it when a friendship exists between two widely- 

 different species, as in such cases as those given in 

 the last chapter of a pheasant and a blackbird, and 

 of a ringed dotterel and a redshank, and of another 

 I observed in South America of a lesser yellowshanks 

 and a pectoral sandpiper who were inseparable, even 

 when mixed in a flock of their own species. 



Cases of birds becoming strongly attached to a 

 human being are quite common — so common indeed 

 that any industrious person could compile a volume 

 of them. One of a pheasant and a lady has been given 

 in the last chapter and I had set down several more to 

 relate in this one, but in view of the multiplicity of 

 subjects, or adventures, to be treated in the book 

 they must be left out. Or all but one given here for 

 a special reason. This is the case of a jackdaw which 

 was found last year, unable to fly, and taken home by 

 a boy in the village of Tilshead in the South Wiltshire 



