affection. Trust begets trust, and the phoebe will place its nest over the lintel 

 of a man's door and there calmly and unafraid keep house until the brood is 

 fledged and flown. It knows nothing of the querulousness of life. It has a sort 

 of serene-mindedness which enables it to rise superior to the triviaHties and the 

 serious troubles of the bird world. 



The dooryard phoebe sets an example in deportment to its close neighbors, 

 the quarrelsome catbirds and the scolding robins — an example which it is need- 

 less, perhaps, to say neither of these neighbors ever shows the slightest desire 

 to follow. 



This Penelope of birds has not been allowed to go unsung of the poets. 

 With some of the human singers the domestic virtues have a holding charm. 

 Lowell lamented that Ovid could not have heard the phoebe's call so that he 

 might have hung "a legendary paean about the memory of the bird." 



How Birds Find Their Way Home 



By John B. Watson 



Naturalists and bird-lovers generally have interested themselves from time 

 immemorial in the question as to whether birds have a special sense which enables 

 them to find their way home after having been forced to leave it through accident 

 or by the caprice of the scientist or the sportsman. The fact that birds do get 

 back from long distances is beyond question, but whether the pathway over which 

 they return must be familiar to them in all cases is the question which the scien- 

 tist is trying to solve. 



The average man who is interested in the doings of birds thinks there is little 

 question that birds at least can return from long distances through a wholly 

 unknown territory, and that consequently they must possess a special homing 

 sense. The scientist, however, with his usual distaste for calling upon unknown 

 and mysterious instincts, is not willing to admit that there is any need at present 

 for supposing that birds have such a faculty. He would explain all the wonderful 

 returns of birds by maintaining that they in all save exceptional cases were not 

 carried out of a territory which was familiar to them. To explain the exceptional 

 cases he holds that since the number of birds returning from very great distances 

 is so small compared with the large number of birds released which do not return, 

 the law of chance will account for the cases of successful return. 



The term "distant orientation" is one now in common use to express the fact 

 that birds, especially homing pigeons, do return to the nest or cote from long dis- 

 tances. The use of the term does not compel us to take sides on the question as to 

 whether the homeward route is known or unknown to the birds. 



What birds are known to find the way home from long distances — leaving 

 aside for a moment the question of how any of them accomplish it? Several birds 

 are able to accomplish the feat. The homing pigeon has been supposed to possess 



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