Vol i90^ VI ] Palmer, Instinctive Stillness in Birds. 27 



features because of its association with its present type of environ- 

 ment, habit and protection through its happily mimetic values 

 being the main incentives to the direction of color development 

 during the early formative stages of the species, the unfitted grades 

 of variation being weeded out by absorption into the general mass 

 of the species, or destroyed. 



Wounded birds are often hard to find as the experienced are 

 well aware. As a good example I select the following incident 

 told me by Mr. H. S. Barber. His brother had made a long shot 

 at one of three Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) in a Florida 

 marsh. The ball had broken both wings and the bird dropped 

 helpless. The boys rushed onwards to secure their game but to 

 their great surprise were unable to find it and could not account 

 for its disappearance. Finally one of the boys started to turn over 

 a pile of supposed rubbish with his foot when to their great surprise 

 it proved to be the wounded bird that now tried to make off. 



I was hunting turkeys in Virginia. My companion and myself 

 had started out before daylight and had separated in the woods about 

 where we expected the turkeys were roosting. I had slowly walked 

 down a slope in a wide ravine, listening, and lingering for a little 

 more light, and finally leaned against a large tree with my hands in 

 my pockets, gun under my arm and my eyes trying to penetrate the 

 slowly vanishing gloom. I thus stood, still and somewhat chilled, 

 for at least thirty minutes with eyes and ears expectant when behind 

 me I heard the cautious pit-pat of feet on the leaves. Keeping my 

 body nearly in the same place I slowly turned my head, at the same 

 time withdrawing my hands for action. Behind me in full view 

 was the best and most interesting gunning experience of a lifetime, 

 a flock of at least a dozen turkeys, the nearest not over twenty-five 

 feet away, the farthest well within gunshot. But for my next 

 movement I have no doubt that the whole flock would have walked 

 by my motionless figure. In this instance but very little mimicry 

 is involved, the general resemblance of my quiet form to the sur- 

 rounding tree trunks preventing me from being noticed because 

 of the absence of motion on my part. 



Mr. Nelson R. Wood has given me the following instance that 

 illustrates another phase of these quiet moments of bird-life. A 

 gunner in Florida had gone out to hunt Wild Turkeys {Meleagris 



