Vol 'i909" VI ] Palmer, Instinctive Stillness in Birds. 35 



seeing a mimicking species unless it moves within its range of vision. 

 Animals have the instinctive faculty of remaining motionless on or 

 about the color that best suits them. Those which remain on areas 

 distinctly of contrasting color with themselves necessarily incur a 

 greater risk of being captured, therefore in the vast majority of 

 present cases the mimicking bird is almost constantly on the ground 

 color that harmonizes with its own coloration, and of which it is a 

 mimic. One of the apparent exceptions to this that I have met with 

 was in finding a young King Rail (Rallus elegans) which I captured 

 in grass. Here the blackness of the bird was in great contrast to the 

 green grass but the bird was astray and hungry. In the rails the 

 young are black and at first thought it might seem that they are not 

 protectively colored. As a matter of fact the black color fits in 

 well with their true environment which is generally a blackish wet 

 mud with numerous protective shadows of overhanging vegetation. 

 The power of mimicry is unconscious in the bird, that is, instinc- 

 tive, a matter of acquired habit, though one readily gathers the 

 impression that in many cases the bird must know that its coloration 

 has a protective or simulative value. There is nothing protective 

 about a Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) in its coloring, the bird is 

 always evident, assertive and able to care for itself. A Quail 

 (Colinus) is protectively colored and of retiring habit, it has learned 

 as a species to keep still, trusting instinctively in its color similarity 

 to its environment to prevent its enemy from seeing it, but on a 

 closer and more dangerous approach it has other means of probable 

 escape. It is of course impossible to believe that the bird is fully 

 conscious of its simulative powers for, as in the case of a day old 

 wader or tern, it has not had sufficient experience, but the instinct 

 is there and we might for want of a better term call it instinctive 

 reason as distinguished from pure reason which is based on thought 

 and therefore deductive. To give an example. I have been lost 

 in the woods. Realizing that condition I have looked about, 

 instinctively determined, with no thought or reasoning, on a direc- 

 tion and made my way out with no difficulty. Yet on some occa- 

 sions where the situation was very much more difficult or complex 

 I have pondered and reasoned. It seems reasonable to assume 

 that the bird follows a tendency which has proved successful for 

 many generations of its ancestors. When not successful there is 



