AN ESSAY ON BIRD-MIND 109 



could imagine its voice quavering off, fainter and 

 fainter, as its vital warmth departed. At the next 

 return of the parent with food the young one was dead. 



It was the utter stupidity of the mother that was so 

 impressive — its simple response to stimulus — of feeding 

 to the stimulus of the young's cry and open mouth, 

 of brooding to that of the nest with something warm 

 and feathery contained in it — its neglect of any steps 

 whatsoever to restore the feUen nestling to safety. 

 It was almost as pitiable an exhibition of unreason 

 as the well-attested case of the wasp attendant on a 

 wasp-grub, who, on being kept without food for 

 some time, grew more and more restless, and event- 

 ually bit off the hind end of the grub and offered it 

 to what was left ! 



Birds in general are stupid, in the sense of being 

 little able to meet unforeseen emergencies ; but their 

 lives are often emotional, and their emotions are richly 

 and finely expressed. I have for years been interested 

 in observing the courtship and the relations of the 

 sexes in birds, and have in my head a number of 

 pictures of their notable and dramatic moments. 

 These seem to me to illustrate so well the emotional 

 furnishing of birds, and to provide such a number of 

 windows into that strange thing we call a bird's mind, 

 that I shall simply set some of them down as they 

 come to me. 



First, then, the coastal plain of Louisiana ; a pond, 

 made and kept as a sanctuary by that public-spirited 



