FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 71 



Friendship among birds is less remarked than it is 

 in mammals, simply, 1 believe, because their inner life 

 is less openly revealed to us; in other words, because 

 they have wings to fly with, and quicker, brighter, more 

 variable or volatile minds to match 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 ar- 

 rested 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. 



