LEARNING TO FLY 209 



bird-nesting boy must over and over again have startled a 

 fledged brood of blackbirds, or linnets, or water-wagtails 

 from the nest for the first time, and seen them flutter in all 

 directions from the bush or stump. They are ready to fly, 

 and fly they can and do, though not far or strongly ; and 

 this may be fairly called an instinctive power, though it needs 

 practice before it is perfect. Practice chiefly comes in the 

 case of these smaller birds by imitation of the parents ; as 

 the water-wagtails flit from stone to stone, and beach to 

 beach, in finding food for the young, the young ones follow 

 them. We seldom see small birds coaxing their young to 

 fly, by fluttering before them in the air, or taking flight just 

 ahead of them, and looking back to see if they are following. 

 But from time to time we do see little devices of this kind 

 among larger birds, which seem to know that they are 

 heavier, and have the same instinctive fear of a fall as men 

 and other flightless animals. Alpine choughs can be watched 

 making many cackling attempts to lure out a brood of 

 young from a precipice hanging above a snowfield ; and 

 though the adult choughs frequent the top of the Matter- 

 horn for scraps from the climbers' lunches, the young ones 

 show little readiness to take to the air. The efforts of the 

 old birds to make them fly may fairly be described as teach- 

 ing, though of a rather clumsy and helpless kind. The 

 larger the bird the more it seems to need the stimulus of 

 example, if not of deliberate parental encouragement, to 

 learn to use its wings. After one has watched many birds 

 the impression is gained that while the smaller kinds, such as 

 thrushes and finches, would learn to fly if they were left 

 entirely to themselves — if they were suddenly deported, say, 

 to some desert island — the larger species would not, or at 

 least would proceed by very slow stages, and would take 

 more than one generation before they reproduced their 



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