158 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
attempts of the handicapped suitor to spread an imaginary tail 
and declare his everlasting devotion prevailed. He was accepted, 
and the pair were inseparable until the nest was finished and the 
duck began sittting on her eleven eggs. 
Turning from the birds in the collection to our wild native 
birds which make the Park their home, or pay it frequent visits, 
we find much of interest in their changed habits and dispositions. 
The sight of so many birds flying unharmed in the flying cages 
or walking about their ranges or swimming on the various 
ponds undisturbed, although in close proximity to man, is fraught 
with significance to the quick perceptions of wild birds, large and 
small. Their keen perceptions and superior powers of intelligence 
tell them that such unwonted altruistic conditions must offer 
advantages. 
The almost immediate recognition of their security in the Park 
is remarkable, and birds which seldom show themselves within 
sight of civilization have come again and again, and exhibited 
a tameness which deceives many people into thinking they must 
be escaped birds. The honored visitation of Canada geese will 
long testify to the truth of this. Wild sea-gulls quite often drop 
from their loose flocks passing overhead, and consort for a few 
days with their wing-clipped kindred. When they leave, the 
young gulls which have been hatched in the Park usually ac- 
company them, but return in a few hours to their home and 
flock. Ducks, herons, and hawks show as quick a realization of 
their immunity from danger in the Park. 
Green herons creep like feathered phantoms among the 
branches of the trees overhanging the water, while great blue- 
and black-crowned night herons, forgetting all shyness, clamber 
over the arches of the big flying cage in broad daylight, and in 
sight of hundreds of people, peering down at their brethren in- 
side and uttering envious quawks as they see the bountiful repast 
of fish and shrimps prepared for those fortunate ones. 
The treatment of the tame crows raised from the nest by their 
wild relations offers an interesting psychological study. Casual 
notes of mine show that the condition of affairs is about as fol- 
lows: The tame individuals are a source of great concern to their 
feral friends. That no gun will be turned against them these 
wild birds well know, but such utter contempt as familiarity with 
man has bred in the tame crows—closely superintending every 
important change of cages or birds, often alighting on the very 
head or shoulders of the attendants—this the wild crows, viewing 
from a distance, seem to think is evidence of a disordered mind, 
