20 BIRDS OF THE WEST 



BIRD INTELLIGENCE. 



It is not probable that female birds know that they resemble 

 their environment in color nor that they gather materials for their 

 nests that will be inconspicuous. Naturally grass birds use grass 

 because it is most available. White strings and bright objects so 

 often woven into nests are surely not put into them for the pur- 

 pose of concealing them and as to the former problem we may 

 say that it is part of Nature's plan and let it go at that. We do 

 not know all of Nature's secrets but we may have the pleasure of 

 guessing — half of life is used in that way. 



It is not my intention to convey the impression in these arti- 

 cles that birds do much, if any, reasoning, or that they are so won- 

 derful in themselves, but I do wish to show that they are beautiful 

 and wonderful as a part of the great, natural plan and I should 

 rather be guilty of romancing than to rob them of the least bit that is 

 theirs. It will be too bad if the crusade against the ' ' Nature fakers ' ' 

 goes to the extent of robbing childhood of the fairies and of Santa 

 Claus. Our keenest joys in life could be "shot to pieces" by the 

 arrows of reason, and if we should live neither in the past nor in 

 the present, the game of life would hardly be worth the candle, so if 

 these articles are at any point more imaginative than real, no 

 apology need be applied for. The man who is not fooled most of 

 the time is rare and the one who thinks he is rarely fooled is often 

 the one who is fooled most of the time, and if while we are being 

 fooled we are having our sympathies deepened, our loves strength- 

 ened and our lives brightened, there need be little worry as to 

 whether the fish-hawk after a dive into the water on a hot day, 

 shakes itself over its nestful of eggs to cool them off or just happens 

 to do so. 



The writings of the anti-" Nature fakers", who would be so 

 strictly honest that they would not attribute anything like human 

 reason to the birds, are almost brimming over with unconscious ad- 

 mission of what they so severely condemn. After the pretty story 

 is told it is unhappy that the secret is let out that it probably isn't 

 true. When we are told of two pretty singers having a singing con- 



