i88 BOMBAY DUCKS 



show that birds during the nesting season are mere 

 automata, creatures of impulse, driven by some inborn 

 force to do many actions of which they understand not 

 the meaning. The more one studies nature, the more 

 does one become convinced of this. 



" I once found," writes the American naturalist. Bur- 

 roughs, " the nest of a black and white creeping warbler 

 in a mossy bank in the woods, beneath which was an 

 egg of the bird. The warbler had excavated the site 

 for her nest, dropped her egg into the hollow and then 

 gone on with her building." This conversion of birds 

 into mere automata at the nesting season is perhaps the 

 most wonderful phenomenon in nature. 



It is obvious that if birds did not, at certain seasons, 

 throw intelligence to the winds and become mere auto- 

 mata they would neither build nests nor sit on the eggs 

 they laid. A bird which has never seen a nest, one, for 

 example, which was hatched out in an incubator, will at 

 the appointed time build a nest of the usual pattern, 

 yet such a bird has had no experience to guide her. 

 When, therefore, a bird sets itself for the first time to 

 collect materials and to weave them into a nest, it is not 

 consciously making a nursery for its chicks, it cannot 

 know why it is collecting sticks. It probably never puts 

 this question to itself. It is content to obey blindly an 

 impulse planted in it by Him who watches over the 

 little birds, and teaches them how to hold their own in 

 the struggle for existence. 



