352 NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



arms as she busied herself with her flowers, and Mrs. 

 Treat has long had the birds as tame around her home. 

 These are leaders who have shown how readily the birds 

 respond to domestication. 



People not infrequently say that wild birds should be 

 wild. It is not "natural" for them to be tame. Why 

 man's best friends, so beautiful, so graceful in every act, 

 so harmless and so important, should not be sufficiently 

 domesticated to look upon man as a friend rather than 

 as an enemy is a mystery indeed. That it is " natural " 

 for birds not to fear man is abundantly attested by 

 their behavior on islands to which unnatural human 

 abuses have not extended and in wildernesses where 

 man is seldom seen. Furthermore, I have never known 

 young birds in the nest to show "instinctive" fear of 

 man. If a nestling be taken without the least fright 

 and without hearing the cries of the parents, it is 

 practically a tame bird from the first. It will take food 

 eagerly from the hand, follow one about, beg, and from 

 the first day act toward a person as toward its own 

 parent. The same is true of nestlings not quite able 

 to fly that are picked up on the ground. If this can 

 be done without frightening them, they will often immedi- 

 ately perch on the finger and feed from the hand. I 

 have tested this with young vireos, chipping sparrows, 

 orioles, grackles, and repeatedly with young robins, which 

 some even put down in their books as untamable. To 

 demonstrate this let any one use ordinary care not to 

 startle or try to grab the little stranger. Think what a 

 monster the open hand must seem to a bird. The grabbing 

 of a bird must be, from its point of view, nothing short of 



