PROPERTY IN BIRD LIFE 



CHAPTER VIII 



Sparrows and Moorhens Defending Property. Rooks 

 AS Tree-owners. Mr. Eliot Howard's "Territory in 



Bird IvIFE." 



Many instances may be brought forward to 

 show that certain birds, at any rate, have a 

 distinct sense of the rights of property. These 

 rights are constantly attacked in the jungle just 

 as they are amongst civilised men, but the primary 

 fact is that the marauder usually shows signs of 

 an uneasy conscience, and the defender of the 

 home or other legal possession draws power from 

 the founts of justice that gives him strength to 

 overcome a much larger adversary. ' ' Thrice 

 is he armed who has his quarrel just," is true in 

 bird, even as in human life. With birds, indeed, 

 the idea of piotecting their home and especially 

 their young, is so strong that it changes the 

 merest feathered atom into a veritable dragon, 

 ready to defy even the colossal mass of iniquity 

 represented by a boy or a cat. 



On one occasion we noted a pair of sparrows in 

 a spout beneath the window, plainly prospecting 

 for a nesting site, or possibly returning to the one 

 occupied the previous year. A stranger came 

 along, sidled along the spout, and began to take a 

 suspicious interest in the pair's domestic arrange- 

 ments. He was at once attacked with relentless 

 fury. The original owner held him down and 

 tore at him as a hawk might. We interfered 

 at last by opening the window, and separating 



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